According to Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, candidates in the three counties posted better performance this year than they did last year.
“Garissa’s mean score this year was 176.86 against 2014’s 157.56, Wajir had a mean score of 183.49 against last year’s 175.34 while Mandera’s mean score was 173.68 against last year’s 151.97,” the CS said.
In January this year, Primary and Secondary school teachers had vowed not return to classrooms following the execution of 28 people, most of them teachers by Al-Shabaab militants in a bus ambush in December 2014.
“We have advised teachers not to go back. They are the subject of the attacks,” Secretary General of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) told journalists at the time.
The attack was followed by an attack in Garissa University that left 148 people dead, with a majority being students. After the attack, more than one thousand teachers refused to go back to classrooms.
Students suffered in big measure with schools such as Nadir Primary School in Fafi Constituency in Garissa County reporting at the time to having only one teacher teaching the entire school.
By June, the then Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi demanded the resumption of teaching in schools, and even threatened to sack those failing to honour the directive.