THIKA SCHOOLS REGISTER GOOD RESULTS IN THE 2015 KCPE.

Thika Sub-County Director of Education Mr. John Ndundu has congratulated Thika West pupils, teachers and entire education stakeholders for positive results in last year's Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE). He said that the sub county recorded a general improvement with the overall Mean Standard Scores (MSS) rising from 270.31 in 2014 to last year's 276.96.

He added that this would not have been possible had it not for the good cordial relationship amongst the sub county's education stakeholders.

Speaking at Thika Primary School for The Blind on Tuesday when he led headteachers and education officers in deliberating on the KCPE results, Mr. Ndundu said that unlike in the national results where candidates from public schools' performed poorly due to the effects of the teachers strike, Thika West schools registered a rise of 1.18, scoring an MSS of 228.47 up from 227.29 in the previous year.

Private schools did so well as the attained an MSS of 312.85. The number of candidates who scored above 400 marks in last year's KCPE were 130 up from 88 in the previous year.

Thika West Sub-County had no cases of exam irregularities, a factor that Mr. Ndundu thanked all the stakeholders in the area. He added that apart from a few challenges in transporting exam personnel and materials to the centres, he said that the process was smooth sailing with nothing peculiar to report.

However, he requested the heads of institutions whose schools scored less that a mean grade of 200 marks as well as those whose schools registered a drop of more than 10 marks, to assemble at Mang'u High School on the 20th of this month for some postmortem analysis of the results. He reminded them that this was not a summon but a forum to analyse their weak areas and coming up with a way forward for this year.

On the on going teachers appraisals, he appealed to teachers not to get jittery about it since it was all for their own good. The performance contract he said was just a contract between individual teachers and their employer that would take into consideration all the working conditions in each case. 



(See Also: THIKA TEACHERS NOT OPPOSED TO APPRAISALS, BUT TSC SHOULD ENSURE THEY ARE REALISTIC.)
 
"This appraisal will not be a blanket contract of 'one size fits all'. It will consider all the conditions that individual teachers are in at their work station. It will involve the targets the teacher agrees on with the employer. It will involve areas such as school and class attendance, quality of teaching, time management, innovation, pupil and student safety as well as their own conduct and discipline. Nothing out of the ordinary. Therefore, teachers should not get scared about it," Mr. Ndundu said.