Education CS Julius Ogamba receives the 2025 KJSEA results from Basic Education PS Julius Bitok during the official release of the results at the Mtihani House, Nairobi, December 11, 2025. /LEAH MUKANGAIThe 2025 Kenya Junior School Education Assessment has ushered in a new and complex grading system whose metric does not allocate percentage or numerical scores for candidates.
Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba said the grading system uses performance levels of Exceeding Expectation, Meeting Expectation, Approaching Expectation and Below Expectation.
The final grade for each learner comprised 20 per cent from the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA), 20 per cent from the school-based assessment in Grade 7 and 8, and 60 per cent summative evaluation at Grade 9 (KJSEA).
Announcing the results at the Kenya National Examination Council headquarters in Nairobi, Ogamba said the grading has further been broken down into two categories based on an eight-point scale.
"The reporting of performance of KJSEA has thus been done from point 1 to point 8 where point 8 is the best at Exceeding Expectation and point 1 is the least at Below Expectation" he said.
According to the metrics, a candidate exceeds expectations if they scored 90-100 per cent (8 points) termed as exceptional.
Those who scored 75-89 per cent received 7 points (very good)
A candidate met expectations if they scored between 58 - 74 per cent (6 points ) and was considered fair performance.
A score of between 41-57 per cent earned candidates 5 points, also considered fair.
Those who scored 31-40 per cent were ranked as approaching expectation and were allocated 4 points (You need improvement)
A 21-30 per cent score earned candidates 3 points (below average)
Candidates in the category of below expectation are those who scored 11-20 per cent (2 points) and were ranked as below average while the last lot that scored 1-10 per cent got one point (minimal).
Ogamba said the creation of the bands serves to distinguish exemplary performance from good performance.
The CS said that out of the 12 subjects assessed at KJSEA, seven recorded a higher proportion of learners performing at Meeting Expectation and Exceeding Expectation.
These were Hindu Religious Education (84.62 per cent); Integrated Science (61.77 per cent); Social Studies (58.56 per cent); Creative Arts and Sports (58.04 per cent); Kiswahili (57.98 per cent); Christian Religious Education (53.96 per cent) and Agriculture at 52.26 per cent.
The CS said 75 per cent of learners performed at Approaching Expectation and above across all subjects, known as learning areas under the Competency-Based Education (CBE).
"Creative Arts and Sports registered the strongest performance with 96.84 per cent of candidates attaining Approaching Expectation and above," Ogamba said.
He said Agriculture was the second-best performing learning area where 96.2 per cent of candidates registered similar performance, followed by Kiswahili at 93.11 per cent and Social Studies at 92.92 per cent.
"An Approaching Expectation grade is sufficient for learners to progress to Senior School pathways that require basic competencies in the subject areas," Ogamba said.
He revealed that female candidates outperformed their male counterparts in Exceeding Expectations in 10 subjects out of the 12 assessed.
He said the widest gender gap was observed in Kiswahili, where 64.86 per cent of girls exceeded expectations against 51.41 per cent of boys. The girls topped CRE with 59.77 per cent against 48.39 per cent of boys registering a similar grade.
In English, 52.86 per cent of girls exceeded expectations against 48.45 per cent of boys who achieved a similar milestone.
Ogamba said 62.89 per cent of girls outshined boys in Social Studies by exceeding expectations compared to 54.35 per cent of boys.
"Of concern, however, are Mathematics and Kenya Sign Language which recorded 32.44 per cent and 22.14 per cent of learners performing at Meeting and Exceeding Expectation respectively," Ogamba said.
A total of 1,130,459 candidates sat the 2025 KJSEA, with boys accounting for 578,630 (51.19 per cent) while girls were 551,829 (48.81 per cent).
Ogamba said that of the total figure, 59.09 per cent of the candidates demonstrated the potential to pursue the STEM pathway in Senior School.
Another 46.52 per cent demonstrated capacity to pursue the Social Sciences pathway and 48.73 per cent the Arts and Sports pathway.
With the results now out, learners will be placed in Senior Schools based on their performance and selected pathways.
The 9,540 Senior Schools have been categorised as C1, C2, C3 and C4, with C1 being the former national schools, C2 the former extra-county schools, C3 county schools and C4 subcounty schools.
The schools were categorised based on the pathways they will offer.
Ogamba assured that the schools have sufficient capacity to absorb all the candidates, considering that 929,262 learners of the current 2.2 million Senior School population will be exiting secondary school after this year's KCSE, leaving only three classes in session.
"These classrooms are expected to provide extra space enabling us to avoid overcrowding. We therefore have more than enough capacity to accommodate the learners," Ogamba said.
He announced that the placement exercise will start next week and is expected to be completed by December 20, 2025.
Grade 10 learners will start reporting from January 12, 2026.
