COUNTY RANKING IN EXAM PERFOMANCE

A smaller number of candidates pushed up marginalised and arid counties in national KCSE ranking, helping them to trounce economic giants like Nairobi, Kiambu, Kajiado and Nyeri.

According to the Kenya National Examinations Council, Samburu was the best performing county. However, a closer analysis reveals that it neither has any candidate in the top 100 nationally nor any top-ranked school.

Siaya, Elgeyo Marakwet, West Pokot and Trans Nzoia completed the list of best-performing counties. But it is all a numbers game. Because counties are ranked on the average performance of all its students, regions with fewer candidates got an advantage over the more populous — and prosperous — ones.

Eight of the top 10 counties registered less than 10,000 candidates, numbers that could have helped them to tilt the scales upwards even without a sterling performance from individual students.

The counties are ranked based on averages of performance index of all their candidates. This means those with fewer numbers stand a good chance of being ranked higher if their students perform above average.

It also means that counties with smaller numbers are likely to have fewer students in every class allowing teachers to have individual attention leading to better performance.

Samburu — which was ranked position one nationally — only registered 969 candidates, 25 times less than those registered in Kiambu. Samburu county had only 16 examination centres.

Kiambu on the other hand, had the highest number of candidates among the 47 counties — 24,268. It was ranked 37, beating only 10 other counties.

However, the top school in Kiambu, Alliance High, was the best school in the country and had 22 students in the list of the top 100.

The school also monopolised all the top positions in the county, a trend that was observed in other big schools.

Despite emerging tops, Samburu did not have a single candidate among the top 100. So was the case in most of the top 10 counties including Elgeyo Marakwet, West Pokot, Bomet and Embu.

In the results released on Monday, the Rift Valley region, whose counties registered fewer candidates, dominated the top slots.

Elgeyo Marakwet which had 5,285 candidates emerged third, followed by West Pokot and Trans Nzoia counties. The two counties had 3,369 and 8,606 candidates respectively.
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