Despite the 2020 Kenyan school year being severely disrupted by the COVID pandemic, the 23 RRBF sponsored students in Form Four returned to school after six months at home to complete their final year exams in March.
From October to December, they had school to themselves as they completed the syllabus and began revision. It must have been hard after spending so long at home, tending to the family plots, and doing domestic chores. But all the RRBF students did return to school and sat their exams.
Kenya prides itself for marking the papers and releasing results within around six weeks and our students now all have their results.
A total of 747,171 students sat the KCSE exams nationally, all receiving one overall grade from the eight subjects they studied. Just 893 achieved an A grade – that’s less than 0.1%, a ridiculously low number, with many of these attending a small number of prestigious national schools.
In this context the results of the RRBF students were great:
This means that 13 achieved a C+ grade or better, which will secure them an offer of a state university place.
And the remaining ten will now look at technical college places. Our hope is that ALL students will continue on to further education. That would be an amazing outcome in this most difficult of years.
Its especially interesting when you compare the results of the RRBF students (below in blue) with the national trend (in red). The vast majority of our students (87%) achieved C and above, whereas nationally only 31% did so (with 69% scoring C and below).
Special mention must go to Veron, who achieved an A-. He was even praised in a televised speech by the Minister of Education. A great reward for a wonderful performance.
Bakhitah, our Kenya Programme Manager, has already been in contact with all these students to ensure that they apply for their national ID card asap. This is crucial, as they need it to take up their place and make an application of their student loan.
Bakhitah will stay in touch with them over the coming months, to make sure that everything is in place so they can continue their studies. And many have now joined our RRBF Family What’s App group of over 135 students so they can share their stories and experiences with other RRBF sponsored students.
We wish them all well in the next phase of their lives.