University admission dates must change

Following the release of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination results this week, attention shifts to university admission. On balance, performance greatly improved this year. Consequently, the number of students qualifying for university admission rose significantly.

A total of 125,746 candidates qualified to join universities this year, way above last year’s 90,377 and 70,073 in 2017. Then, the numbers had gone down following a raft of rules and regulations enforced in 2016 to curb exam cheating. In the era of cheating, pass rates were exceptionally high as grades were inflated through dubious means. For example, in 2015, there were 165,766 university qualifiers against student enrolment of 522,870, representing 32 per cent. Yet for the present cohort of 697,222 candidates, the qualifiers account for just 18 per cent.

For now, the concern is placement and admission of the students. One of the critical issues that requires urgent review is the date of admission of the students. Universities admit government-sponsored students in September, which is the start of the academic calendar and runs until May of the following year. This is a carry-over from the colonial past. Kenya’s universities and for that matter, the East African region, continue to follow in the tradition of British universities, where the academic calendar begins in September, during spring and ends in May, autumn, to allow students to take leave during summer, which is a vacation period in the north.

We are flagging this issue because circumstances have changed. As part of the reforms in exams administration, Form Four and Standard Eight exam results now come out early. Previously, the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam results came out at the end of December and KCSE in February of the following year. KCPE results now come in November and KCSE in December.

Universities should review their academic calendar. With Form Four results coming out in December, admission dates should be pushed back preferably to May or July to guard against wastage in terms of transition. After KCSE results are released in December, Form Four leavers are forced into a nine-month waiting period. Those waiting for university admission find themselves with a lot of idle time. Unengaged teenagers can easily fall to temptations and waste themselves away and fail to join universities. Universities should therefore consider changing admission dates in line with the schedules of Form Four exams.