Former KCSE giants that don’t roar anymore

Education CS Julius Ogamba and Basic Education PS Julius Bitok release the 2025 KCSE exam results at AIC Chebisaas Boys’ High School on January 9, 2025 /MoE

For more than a decade, a relatively stable group of national and high-performing private schools dominated the official order of merit for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education results released annually by the Kenya National Examinations Council.

From as early as the 2000s, names such as Alliance High School, Kabarak High School, Kapsabet Boys', Maseno School, Kenya High, Alliance Girls', Mang'u High School and a handful of elite private institutions appeared with predictable regularity at the top, often posting mean scores in the A– range and setting the benchmark for academic excellence.

That era started to fade around 2014, when the government scrapped official school ranking, citing unhealthy competition and exam cheating. What followed was not an absence of comparison, but a shift in dominance by traditional high performers. 

Media houses, education analysts and individual schools continued to compile provisional rankings based on released results and mean scores.

While unofficial, these compilations offer a clear enough picture to trace a profound realignment in Kenya’s academic hierarchy over the past decade.

A review of KCSE exam performance from 2001 to 2013, followed by unofficial data from 2014 to 2025, reveals three broad categories: former giants that have faded, survivors that have held their ground albeit with declining mean scores, and a new elite that has emerged to challenge—and in some cases displace—the old guard.

The age of dominance

At the dawn of the new millennium through to 2013 when schools were last officially ranked, Alliance High School and Alliance Girls' were near-permanent fixtures in the top five.

Moi High School Kabarak, then a relatively young private institution, rose rapidly to become a top-tier performer, frequently exchanging first place with Alliance schools.

Kapsabet Boys', Maseno School, Kenya High School and Maryhill Girls' also built reputations as academic powerhouses. Mean scores during this period underscore this observation.

In 2012, for example, the top schools posted performance indices equivalent to strong A– averages, with Kabarak (78.859) and Alliance High (78.492) leading nationally. The margins between the first and last 20 elite schools were small, posting a difference of just 5.467.

Even schools ranked 15th to 20th were still clustered comfortably in the B+ range, with newcomers like Anestar Boys' High, Moi Tea Girls' and Nyahururu Elite Girls' making their mark alongside seasoned heavyweights such as Precious Blood Riruta, Starehe Boys' Centre and Kapsabet Boys'.

In 2013 when schools were last ranked, Alliance High School emerged top with a performance index of 81.783, followed by Moi Kabarak (79.862), Precious Blood Riruta (79.604), Kapsabet Boys' (79.062) and Maseno School (78.701).

Other top performers were Molo Academy (77.270), Strathmore School (77.060), Chavakali High (77.005), Maryhill Girls' High (76.826) with Kenya High wrapping up the top 10 slot with 76.030.

Former giants that lost their roar

The abolition of official ranking in 2014 did not immediately dethrone the giants.

Provisional lists compiled after that year's KCSE exam results still showed a familiar trend: Alliance High, Kabarak, Precious Blood Riruta, Kapsabet Boys', Maseno and Strathmore all appeared in the leading positions, many still posting A– mean grades.

However, this year marked the start of a mild shift in performance metrics. Mean scores began to compress. Even schools that retained top 10 positions were no longer pulling decisively away from their peers.

Alliance High’s provisional mean of about 81.8 in 2014 remained impressive, but the downward trend that would define the next decade had begun. From 2015 onwards, provisional rankings increasingly showed volatility.

Schools that had once dominated year after year now oscillated between the top 10 and the wider top 20, while others slipped out entirely. Precious Blood Riruta, a consistent top-five performer before 2014, began to fade from elite contention after 2016.

Pangani Girls', once a regular in the top tier, gradually lost visibility in national top 10 compilations. Starehe Boys', long associated with academic and social excellence, appeared less frequently among the very top. 

Maranda High School, which broke the dominance of traditional top performers by emerging as the top school nationally in 2011 with a mean score of 11.4, lost footing over the years, ranking 17th in 2015 before dropping further to 18th in 2024 with a mean score of 9.6.

The giants of yesterday did not all fail; many remained strong performers nationally but in the new, more crowded top tier, historical reputation was no longer enough to guarantee elite status.

High flyers such as Isiolo's Garbatula High School, Sacho High in Baringo, Nakuru's Bahati Girls', Shimo La Tewa High School in Mombasa and the Moi Girls' high schools in Eldoret and Nairobi, once household names, fizzled out.

The survivors

A smaller group of traditional national schools managed to survive the post-2014 turbulence, though often at a cost. Alliance High School, Kenya High School, Alliance Girls' and Kapsabet Boys' continued to feature prominently in provisional rankings from 2014 to 2024.

What changed was the scale of their dominance. From around 2016, mean scores for even the strongest survivors settled into the high nines and low 10s, reflecting both changes in examination grading and intensified competition.

Alliance High, for instance, which routinely posted A– means before 2014, appeared in later years with provisional means closer to 9.5–10.1.

Kenya High and Alliance Girls', particularly from 2017 onward, became more prominent than their male counterparts, frequently topping provisional lists with means slightly above 10.0. Kabarak High School presents another survivor story, though a more uneven one.

After dominating the early 2010s, it remained competitive through 2015 but became less consistently visible at the very top from 2017 onward, often trailing newer entrants even when still performing strongly.

Mang'u High, once the undisputed champion before and and the start of the new millennium also managed to stay afloat amid tight pressure from newcomers, posting a mean score of 9.98 in 2017.

The elite Kiambu school posted means in the 10s thereafter, managing to rank among the best nationally although the top spot, which once felt like a birthright, remained elusive.

The rise of the new elite

The displacement of traditional giants did not happen overnight, but it became clearly visible when provisional rankings increasingly featured newer names above long-established national schools. 

Perhaps the most striking trend since 2018 has been the emergence of new academic heavyweights. Nyambaria High School and Cardinal Otunga High School exemplify this shift.

From around 2020, both schools began posting provisional mean scores above 10.2, placing them ahead of several traditional giants.

By 2022 and 2023, Nyambaria was widely cited by media and analysts as the top-performing school nationally, with provisional means approaching 10.9—levels comparable to the best years of the old order.

Other institutions, including Light Academy, Kagumo High School and Karima Girls', also established themselves as consistent top-tier performers during this period.

In the absence of national metrics, regionally, some old performers continue to hold steady.

In the 2025 exams, Maranda High School emerged as Nyanza's top giant, posting a mean score of 10.2, with only 10 candidates failing to achieve university cut-off points.

Maseno School, best remembered for posting impressive scores in 2008 (11.05), 2009 (11.09) and 2012 (10.93), took second position followed by Asumbi Girls', Mbita High, Kisumu Boys' and Kisumu Girls'.

In Kiambu, other traditional high performers Alliance High School, Mang'u High, Maryhill Girls' and Alliance Girls' High School also posted mean scores in the 10s.

It is important to emphasise that all rankings from 2014 to 2025 are provisional, drawn from media compilations, analyst reports and school disclosures rather than official Knec orders of merit.

In the 2025 KCSE, comparable summaries place Moi High School Kabarak as the top school nationally with a mean score of 10.59, followed by Alliance High School with 10.47, Maranda High School at 10.20 and Nova Pioneer Tatu Boys' High School.

Despite its unofficial status, the ranking tells a coherent and compelling story: academic excellence in Kenya has become more distributed, more competitive and less predictable.

In 2025, 993,226 candidates sat KCSE exam, comprising 492,012 male candidates and 501,214 female candidates (49.54 per cent and 50.46 per cent of the total candidature respectively).

The number of candidates with direct university entry qualification of mean grade C+ and above was 270,715 (27.18 per cent), an improvement from 246,391 (25.53 per cent) in the 2024 KCSE.