Parents of students who earned their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education at the prestigious Laiser Hill Academy Secondary in 2023 are extremely angry.
This follows mass failure posted by most of their children, most of whom scored less than the minimum direct university entry grade of C+.
The majority of the parents took schools’ management to task through the official What Sapp group blaming it for their children’s dismal performance.
Interestingly, the school management had not posted the results of all the 40 students who sat the 2023 KCSE exams anywhere days after the release by Education CS Ezekiel Mochogu, leaving parents in the dark about the overall performance.
extremely poorly
Most of the parents however said their children had performed extremely poorly despite them paying expensive school fees to the prestigious school.
“It is quite disheartening getting poor performance after paying a huge sum of money (school fees) yet candidates from normal public schools with poor infrastructure are performing very well. As much as they (school management) try to say we should not only look at academics, we are in a developing country for God’s sake!! Not in Europe or USA where extracurricular is taken seriously… in Africa, it is academic that accounts largely to your child’s future,” ranted Mwanjeru who is one of the many unhappy parents.
“We need to know how poor we performed (if the school’s overall performance is posted here) if individual performance was this horrible, how about the overall performance,” said another parent
“Since we got our individual children’s performance, let us see the best we can do for them now to make them belong and forget the overall results analysis, we invested a lot on believing in this institution (Leiser Hill Academy Secondary School). The silence (of not posting overall performance) tell is all,” went on another parent
Other parents claimed the school’s management treats the staff and teachers so badly and this is translating into their poor handling of their teaching role hence affecting performance in national exams.
“For those of us parents who had a chance to discuss with any of the subject teachers, it was obvious the teachers are poorly paid, poorly motivated, and ill-equipped to prepare the candidates for exams, My observation is that teachers in that school are so scared of the management, particularly the director. It is just unfortunate that to some of us, this observation was noted very late…,” said Munyao Munyoki, one of the many disgruntled parents through their WhatsApp group.
parent’s expectations
As if to confirm Munyao Munyoki’s observation, no one in the management including the head teacher responded to the disgruntled parents from the day the results were released on Monday, January 8, 2024, until Wednesday, January 10 when the director, Manraj Palan gave a general response to the parent’s outcry.
He congratulated the few who passed but expressed disappointment in the many in which many students failed to live up to the school and parent’s expectations.
“Dear Parents, I would like to start by congratulating all students who did well. I take note of what several parents feel,
“They feel let down. The truth of the matter is that we are equally disappointed. We expected several students to do better and are very surprised about some performances,
“We are carrying out an in-depth analysis. The best way to do this is to check against past performances and compare the results,”
“It is only after we have done that that we can make a call on the way forward. However, I am sure you all agree with me when I say that examinations are not necessarily a true judgment of an individual’s capability,
“Exams are just one way of evaluating a person. Children may wake up sick or simply under the weather. Children may panic and may read questions wrongly. A lot can go wrong on that day,
“In a system which lacks transparency, it becomes difficult to seek justification. KNEC may remark as ordered to do, but in our experience, they do not accept their mistakes,” He said through a long WhatsApp text in the official group.
He eventually posted the results after all parents insisted on having a look at the overall performance to understand why the individual performance was as received.
KCSE 2023 performance
Leiser Hill Academy KCSE 2023 performance was thus as follows;
A, 0 candidates.
A-, 1 candidate.
B+, 2 candidates.
B, 2 candidates.
B-, 2 candidates.
C+, 7 candidates.
C, 10 candidates.
C-, 6 candidates.
D+, 5 candidates.
D, 4 candidates.
D-, 3 candidates.
E, 0 candidates.
Total: 46 candidates.
According to the official National KCSE 2023 examination results, a total of 494,317 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) candidates have scored a mean grade of D+ and below in the just released results.
This constituted 54.72 percent or more than half of all candidates who sat the exam. From the results, 125,006 candidates scored a mean grade of D+, while 155, 276 managed grade D plain.
Further, a total of 165, 861 candidates scored D-.
In the grade E category, there are a total number of 48, 174 candidates, which equates to 5.33 percent.
A total of 1,216 candidates scored grade A and a total of 18,078 candidates scored grade B+.
