Appendix 3
The School Certificate results
Kenya

fig.2

This graph (Fig. 2) of the percentage of failures (Grade 9) shows a certain parallelism between Kakamega and Maseno in the periods 1966-68 and 1969-71 in the variation of the language failure rate. (I did not collect Maseno figures for 1972.) This tends to suggest that there may be some other factor or factors at work besides teaching method. However, in the period of 1969-70, when the two main English Block groups took the exam Maseno did rather better in literature. One possible factor for the parallelism is that at independence a large number of older people - probably up to 30 years old in secondary school - were admitted to school. Some of these tended to be too old to cope with the work which was necessarily aimed at younger people. But they may not have gone to Maseno which was more selective.
Maseno students were probably selected from a higher grade of primary leaving pass, as it was a National School at the time. This points to the need to compare the pass rates of another school with a local intake, possibly Kapsabet.