The Minister for Education, Mutula Kilonza will release the KCPE results on Monday 28th January 2013 at Mitihani House, off Caledonia Road, Nairobi at 9.00AM.

811,930 candidates sat the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination last year.

Parents and candidates will also be able to get the results through the mobile phone by sending their index numbers to 5052 and on the website www.knec.ac.ke. This service will, however, be available only after the completion of the minister’s official event.

Upon receipt of the results, candidates will have 30 days to scrutinise them and lodge complaints with Knec, including all forms of discrepancies in the details of the result slips.

A big scramble is expected for places in the 78 national schools most of which were only recently upgraded. As of 2002, Kenya had just 18 such schools.

Traditionally, KCPE results are released towards the end of December. The delay was caused by the teachers’ strike last year.

Government statistics indicate that the transition from primary to secondary education currently stands at 73 per cent, from 43 per cent in 2003.

Of those who make it to high school, though, only 74 per cent complete their education which is, however, an improvement from 46 per cent in 2008.

1.0 The Kenya National Examinations Council wishes to inform parents/guardians, candidates, stakeholders and the general public that the 2011 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination results will be released on Wednesday 28th December 2011.

The ceremony will be officiated by Hon. Amb. Prof. Sam K. Ongeri, Minister for Education, at Mitihani House, off Denis Pritt Road, opposite St. Georges Secondary School starting from 9.00 am.

2.0 All Provincial Directors of Education (PDEs) are requested to be present during the ceremony and to pick the results for the schools ¡n their provinces for distribution to their respective District Education Officers.

Invitation to relevant stakeholders has been sent through separate letter and they are advised to confirm their availability to the address given in the letter.

3.0 Candidates are advised to collect their results from the respective centres where they registered for their examination.

The examination results will also be available on the KNEC website: www.knec.ac.ke and can also be received by sending the candidate’s index number through a short text message (sms) to 5052 immediately after the announcement by the Minister for Education on 28th December 2011.

Please note that each sms will be charged and subscribers are advised to send one SMS and wait for the results before sending another one to avoid jamming the system.

4.0 Upon receipt of their results, the candidates are advised to thoroughly scrutinize them for correctness.

In particular, they must ensure the accuracy of the following:

4.1 Candidates’ particulars i.e. names, index number and gender;

4.2 school names and codes;

4.3 Individual subject grades and mean score.

5.0 Any discrepancy MUST be communicated to the Council within one month (30 days) after the release of examination results. This includes appeals for remarking. The Council will not accept any queries on the 2011 KCPE examination results after 31st January 2012.

6.0 Candidates who have their results withheld will receive a letter through their head teacher explaining why their results have been withheld until they submit the required documents e.g. birth certificates for their results to be released.

Such candidates must submit the documents through their respective school and NOT directly to the Council, by 31st January 2012 failure to which it will be deemed that the candidates does not have the required document and their results will subsequently be cancelled.

7.0 The Council does not issue result slips for KCPE candidates. Instead the result slips are issued by respective schools.

8.0 All candidates must note that a result slip is not a certificate. The Kenya National Examinations Council reserves the right to correct the information given on result slips which will be confirmed by the issue of certificates.

COUNCIL SECRETARY/CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

10 lessons to learn from the KCPE Results of 2009

1. Private academies pupils get better marks than their public schools counterparts. However, one cannot ascertain whether this means they are brighter, more intelligent or better than those who attend public schools. Probably.

2. The Government of Kenya is catching up with the usage of information communication technology. The minister can have the national results in a flashdisk, CD or DVD instead of those bulky paper reports. You can check your KCPE Results 2009 online (www.examscouncil.or.ke) or via SMS. Further, you can query which school you have been selected to join via SMS.

3. Free primary education is proving to be a very expensive venture for many Kenyan kids in public schools. While literacy levels are rising among the young generation, the quality and standards of education and learning are very much compromised. It is an old adage, cheap is expensive.

4. We can still know which schools are the best for our kids. The media will always tell us from which schools the best pupils come from. As a school owner, you can brag and advertise your school by listing the names of best performing candidates in the national newspapers.

5. The best pupil was a boy just like other years. Boys always lead by getting the best KCPE marks than girls. I wonder.

6. Hardwork, God, Teachers and Mums rank high as the secret to getting good KCPE marks. I did not hear any attributions to the school, team work, study groups, dads, books, school equipment, pastors, neighbours, witchcraft, food or the government

7. Cheating, cheating, cheating. It starts early in Kenya. Further, prisons do not reform prisoners. KCPE Results 2009 of Thika prisoners were canceled for cheating.

8. Ministers and permanent secretaries are not responsible at all for any financial misappropriation in their ministries. Kenyans are fools to demand accountability from any political appointees.

9. Kenyans have forgotten that one can be corrupt or be allegedly corrupt and still smile wickedly and talk arrogantly. Mta do?

10. There is so so much money in Kenya. The minister of finance can still get billions to divert to free primary education in a matter of hours after the ministry of education allegedly misappropriates its millions. The latest money minting venture in Kenya is to be the head of a Kenyan public school or work at the Ministry of Education. Primary school education is big money in Kenya.

The time for the annual exam results circus has come around again. "Big Drop in KCPE Grades" read the headline in the Star December 30,2009. The sub-heading was "New Rules to Curb Exam Cheating." Were the two related, do you think?

Those who won high marks were feted as conquering heroes, and lists displayed the names of the top 10 students in each region. Hooray for them but what does it all mean?

Does the drop indicate that students were more stupid this year, teachers more incompetent or cheating attempts less successful? And what about all the rest? Those at the bottom? Are they not human beings in need of attention too?

Let's be clear about one thing: exams have nothing to do with real education. All they do is test how good you are at passing exams. The cleverest people in my experience have been notoriously incapable of squeezing their intelligence into the narrow confines of a brief question. The only fair way is by continuous assessment, with perhaps a single exam at the end to confirm key issues.

What of the teachers who taught them? They were not in the picture. This maintains the illusion that clever children will do brilliantly even without teachers, whereas the fact remains that the profession is tied to producing results, demoralised, understaffed and under-resourced.

Apparently there is a shortage of 45,000 teachers in the country but there has been no recruitment for five years in spite of the introduction of free primary education for all.

Why not interview the teachers of the whizzkids? Ask them what methods they used? Were they teaching to the test?

Because real education has to do with learning how to think, how to do research, how to be critical (even of your own teachers and headmasters!) and how to listen to another's point of view.

A true education would teach you how to read material of all kinds and to assess its veracity. It would not make vocation the one and only end for in these difficult and uncertain times, we often need more than one career as former top bankers and lawyers in New York are finding out to their cost.

Imagine that if we had an education system specifically geared to this country's needs (and not a colonial hangover which was long ago abandoned in the "mother" country), one which taught tolerance by rule and example and included studies of the many ethnic groups that make up this society (not only black) that we might not have witnessed the terrible spectacle of the 2008 post elec-tion violence whose scars have not even begun to heal?

Could there be an education that taught that not all whites are rich, not all Asians are greedy, and not all Kikuyus are born with business skills in their genes? That brought back art and music to a place where they are studied seriously, because they too have much to teach us besides offering vocations.

Such a curriculum would not have to worry about cheating because cheating is only useful when the answer is so simple it can fit onto a mobile phone or the back of a hand.

Is there a one word reply to "describe the contribution the peoples of the coast have made to the development of Kenya since independence?"

In all the excitement about numbers there has been no attention paid to content or purpose. Or analysis of the reasons preventing girls from going to school particularly in certain parts of the country.

But when it comes to cheating, my sympathies, I confess are all with those who try. Why shouldn't they? Everyone else does! The least privileged have just been cheated out of billions which would have provided them with essential books and materials not to speak of computers and the culprits, we are now told, predictably, had political motives. But we still don't know their names and the ministers who head the department are still drawing their large salaries. And yes, parents will do absolutely anything to ensure their children get the best exam results because everything hangs on it.

And teachers will assist them because their own status also hangs upon it. Not on how well they taught but on how many pupils passed. But my best Christmas present came by email from one of the worst students I have ever had who was forced, poor girl, to study literature. She failed. But she is now a mental health nurse in the UK and the mother of a toddler.

"You were the best teacher I have ever had, and we gave you such a hard time," she wrote. That was nine years ago, but clearly she has learned something and I am proud of her.

Caplan comments on topical issues.