KJSEA does not provide aggregate scores, exams body clarifies
Education
By
Irene Githinji
| Dec 16, 2025
Schools have been urged to desist from undertaking analyses of the Kenya Junior School Education (KJSEA) results as it is not only inaccurate but misleading to the public.
Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) Chief Executive Officer David Njengere yesterday explained that, unlike under the 8-4-4 system, KJSEA does not provide aggregate scores.
Dr Njengere said one of the major purposes of education reforms that brought about Competency Based Education (CBE) was to nurture every learners’ potential, which is done progressively right from primary to junior and then to senior level.
Njengere said that each subject is assessed independently, and learners’ achievements are reported using performance levels, not totals or ranking, an approach which ensures that a child’s excellence in one subject is not overshadowed by weaker performance in another.
READ MORE
MPs pledge site visist as KTDA gives progress on hydro power project
Why Gen Zs are not sending money to parents
The true impact of Iran-US war on the Kenyan economy
KPA steps up plans for expansion of Kisumu Port
Infrastructure, trust key to cities success as Nairobi, Rome stagnate
HF Group posts 40pc jump in full-year net profit to Sh1.4 billion
How personalised developments are reshaping local property market
Government tightens oversight on Saccos to safeguard members' deposits
“We have given the cluster weight in the report for each child and pathway. Then some are still calculating themselves. Why are they calculating? It cannot be 72, what they are calculating is a raw score of every candidate. How do you get four decimal places if it is a simple multiplication? It is done using something called a Z-score because we are calculating cluster weight, it is a statistical process,” the exams body boss sought to explain.
“A Z-score is calculated considering the entire population of 1.1 million learners who took the assessment. When dealing with a large population, you do not do descriptive statistics because the population is too big, no child needs to do their own calculations of their cluster weight.”
The KNEC boss insisted the purpose of reforms was to nurture every learners’ potential, reiterating this is done by starting at the primary level where learners are taken through literacy, numeracy, socialisation and other basic things.
Learners then proceed to junior school, where for three years, they are exposed to a broad curriculum to know their potential and interests.
“We then start to assess you, because we cannot assess competences using one assessment like in 8-4-4. It starts at Grade 4 when the first School Based Assessment (SBA) is done, another at Grade 5 and then the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) at Grade Six,” explained Njengere.
At junior school, another SBA is done in Grades 7 and 8, followed by a summative assessment, with Njengere saying that the body then takes 20 per cent from KPSEA, 20 per cent from Grades 7 and 8 then 60 per cent from the summative.
“We then report for each learning area because the aim is to identify strengths to help you to a pathway, so we do not need to start aggregating and saying you have what scores. What is helpful is to know the pathway to pursue and results are issued for the nine learning areas,” he said, adding:
“These are abbreviations unlike the previous system which was a value. For each learning area, we tell you where you are and we go to the next step, where, based on the performance of learning areas, your cluster weight to pursue stem out of 74. This is calculated in four decimal places because there will possibly be many learners who may end up with similar scores. The decimal places are important.”
Grading is done in accordance with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development curriculum designs.
Senior school is the fourth level of basic education that learners proceed to after pre-primary, primary and junior school levels.
Learners are expected to take seven learning areas as recommended by the Presidential Working Party on Educational Reforms.