General background
Kenya is a country of 34 million with a literacy rate of 85%, among the highest in Africa. Education is nominally compulsory and free for primary school (eight years). Secondary school (four years) costs upwards of $200 a year (per capita GDP is $1,100), and about half the appropriate age cohort is enrolled. The best-established secondary schools are boarding schools, because at the time they were founded high schools were few and far between and transportation was limited. Government-supported boarding schools now cost $400 or more per year, private schools roughly double that.
In spite of these costs, even the poorest families commonly struggle to educate their most promising children, some selling precious assets like land or cattle to pay the fees of the best schools for which their children qualify. Qualification is based on the national primary school final exam (KCPE). Top scorers nationwide are eligible for places in 17 highly selective “national” government-supported secondary schools or in comparable private schools. The next highest scorers qualify for so-called “provincial” schools, and the rest—the vast majority—are consigned to lowly “district” schools, which may be all the students’ families can afford, no matter how well the students scored on the KCPE. A number of KenSAP students have wound up at district schools under just these circumstances.
Not surprisingly, in view of this hierarchical structure, most of the top scorers on the national secondary school exam (KCSE) come from national or provincial schools. The KCSE is administered each October to about 250,000 Form Four students (high school seniors) throughout the country. Students generally take exams in eight subjects, most of which they have studied for four years. Their aggregate mark is based on seven subjects, English, Math, Kiswahili, two sciences and two non-science subjects (history, geography, religion, etc.). About 5% of the students who take KCSE score an aggregate B+ or better (there is no grade inflation in Kenya!), which qualifies them for places in state-supported universities. But those who qualify have to wait nearly two years after taking the KCSE before enrolling because of a mandatory gap period that resulted from structural imbalances introduced when Kenya abolished A-level education in 1989.