The ranking of schools and students in national examinations is meant to encourage positive competition. In addition, the public posting of examination outcomes is meant to hold schools and teachers accountable for the students' performance on standardized examinations. However, ranking has been known to create the impression that, there are good and bad schools in Kenya. The top performing schools are regarded as effective schools while low performing are regarded as ineffective. This belief influences enrolment, promotion rates and performance trends in different schools as revealed by this...

Secondary schools in Kenya are under pressure to raise the level of their students' academic performance. As a result, improvement strategies are constantly being adopted. Among these are collaboration and benchmarking. Despite their adoption, academic performance in the Western Region of Kenya has remained very dismal. This study was carried out to establish why this was so.It revealed that, the schools that adopted both practices had above average means and high university percentage pass grades. Those that adopted only one of the strategies were merely average while those involved that...