Education Cabinet Secretary, Ezekiel Machogu has issued a directive to the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) to maintain the portal open for another week.
Through a statement issued by the Ministry of Education, Machogu detailed that the deadline should be pushed to March 4 2024, to allow enough time for students to complete their applications.
“Therefore, further to the extension notice issued by KUCCPS on February 25, 2022, and to ensure that all the remaining applicants get a chance to submit their choices both to universities and colleges, the Ministry of Education has instructed the Placement Agency to extend the deadline for seven more days,” until March 4, 2024, read the statement in part.
The deadline has since been extended twice, with KUCCPS having previously announced an extension till further notice on February 25.
The KUCCPS students portal.
Initially, after the opening of the portal, KUCCPS had set the deadline to February 22, but ended up revising that to February 26, after Kenyans raised complaints about the website’s technical errors.
While acknowledging, the uproar, Machogu responded by stating that “The Ministry has taken note of the challenges that some students have faced in the ongoing application process.”
“The Ministry of Education and other stakeholders in Government are working together to ensure that the challenges are addressed and all applicants are facilitated to apply for programmes and institutions of their choice.”
Additionally, the CS noted that the placement service expects a volume of around 171,738 applications which is 86% of the number of candidates who scored a C+ and above in the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Secondary examination, based on the patterns shown by 2022 applicants.
Further, the Ministry of Education has explained that 60.8 per cent of the applicants who scored a C+ and above (121,391) have already applied to various courses successfully as of February 25.
He equally noted that the ministry had been monitoring the process and was working to ensure that service facilitated a fair placement exercise for all the candidates who aimed to transition to tertiary learning institutions.
The CS also added that the ministry had compiled a technical team comprising of representatives from relevant agencies to fast-track the application transactions.
However, the statement provided that In the meantime, applicants whose payments are experiencing unusual delays were encouraged to use the USSD code *222# to confirm their payments and/or trigger validation.
Machogu also directed that KUCCPS disseminate an immediate detailed procedure for the payment confirmation prompts.
KUCCPS Chief Executive Officer Dr. Agnes Mercy Wahome gives an address in July 2023.
By Kenyans.co.ke