Abstract:
Private schools supplement the government’s efforts of providing education in Kenya. Pupils from private primary
schools have been out-performing those from public primary schools at Kenya Certificate of Primary Education
(KCPE). However, it has not been clear whether the same trend continues when the same students enter secondary
school education. The purpose of this study was to compare KCSE and Mock Examinations’ Mean Scores between
Secondary School Students from Public and Private Primary Schools in the year 2004 and 2005. The comparison
sought to establish whether there is a statistically significant difference in the mean scores in KCSE for the year
2004 and year 2005 form four students in provincial schools in Nakuru District. The population of the study
comprised 2004 and 2005 form four students in Nakuru District. Stratified random sampling technique was used
to select a sample of 240 students from 6 provincial schools out of the 19 provincial schools in Nakuru District.
The six schools were randomly selected from the three categories of secondary schools; Boys only, Girls only and
Co-educational (Mixed). The instrument used to collect data was the Students’ Academic Performance Summary
Form 1 (SAPSF1) and Students' Academic Performance Summary Form 2 (SAPSF2). Data analyses were done
by both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics involved means and standard deviation while
inferential statistics involved t-test. The test of significance was done at alpha = 0.05. The study found out that in
KCSE, students from public primary schools had higher mean scores than those from private primary schools
and the means were statistically significant.
