This is how to avoid heartbreak during Form One selection

Every year, parents and guardians often find themselves stranded and, at times, spoilt for choice soon after the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) results are released and Form One selection begins.

Complaints have always arisen from parents over their children being picked to join “inferior” schools or ones they never selected.

It is an issue that will continue to affect many students as well as their parents if proper advice and guidance are not offered at the time of choosing preferred secondary schools.

Hence, as the registration of candidates for this year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education continues, both teachers and parents need to be involved by ensuring candidates receive proper guidance on secondary school choices and the admission procedures of different secondary schools.

These concerns, in most cases, come in very late when nothing or little can be done to salvage the situation and get the children enrolled in their preferred schools.

Even in schools that attempt to guide their learners, they often prioritise the interests of the schools and parents with little or no attention being given to which kind of school the child, given an opportunity, would willingly choose to join.

This is compelled by the fact that primary schools, as well as parents, tend to derive a sense of both achievement and fulfilment when their students secure admission, especially to top national schools.

As a result, such schools often get a lot of students picking them as their first choice.

Since the capacity of these schools cannot allow them to take all the students, parents, guardians and students are left crying foul when they are selected to different schools which they consider inferior.

Each year, each of the top national schools get more than 100,000 applications from candidates, yet they can only admit about 600.

In 2018, Pangani Girls, for instance, attracted 87,209 students as their first choice, while about 11,015 picked the school as their second choice though it has the capacity to admit only about 336 students.

This implies that a majority of candidates would miss out on their first choice.

In making secondary school choices, both teachers and parents need to take into account the academic abilities and competencies of their students.

They need to consider whether the student has special interests in certain subjects, identify the schools that offer them and advise accordingly.

The concerned candidates should also be actively involved and be made to understand what such choices may portend in their future academic life.

Adequate information on the admission procedures of particular schools should also be brought to the attention of both the learners and their parents.

A case in point is where a Form One student lost his chance at Starehe Boys Centre.

According to the acting centre director, Mr Josephat Mwaura, the student failed to meet the admission requirements of the school.

The student, who was said to have merely been one of the 24 students who had been recommended for consideration by the ministry, failed to fill in the requisite forms by July of the previous year.

Currently, the country has 103 national schools, which admit students who score over 400 marks.

Though such schools admit top candidates from every sub-county on the basis of choices they made during registration for KCPE, the selection criteria is also guided by merit, equity and affirmative action.

Students who are left out at this level end up taking slots at the 531 extra-county schools or at the 1,031 county schools while the rest settle for the sub-county schools.

Therefore, as teachers take their candidates through this process, it should be done with clear understanding that in the end, there will be far-reaching ramifications, and in some instances, some hard decisions will have to be made by parents once the results are announced later in the year.