Grades 4, 5, 7 and 8: End-of-Year Results and Holiday Plan

For most Kenyan families with children in Grades 4, 5, 7 and 8, the year has a quiet ending. There is no national exam week for them. Term 3 closed on Friday 23 October 2026, the Grade 6 and Grade 9 candidates take over the schools for KPSEA and KJSEA, and everyone else goes home for what the Ministry of Education calls a ten-week holiday, running to 1 January 2027. But the quiet hides something important. The end-of-year assessments your child sat in these grades were not just school tests. They were part of KNEC's school-based assessment, and those scores count towards the national results your child will receive at the end of Grade 6 or Grade 9.

This guide explains what those end-of-year assessments were, how much they count, how to read the report you get, and how to use the long holiday sensibly for each of the four grades. It is the companion to our earlier guide to the Grade 4 and 5 end of Term 3 exams, which covered preparing for the tests; this one is about what comes after.

Information current as of Term 3, October 2026. KPSEA and KJSEA dates for 2027 had not been published at the time of writing.

What were the end-of-year assessments in Grades 4, 5, 7 and 8?

In August, KNEC released its 2026 school-based assessment schedule for Grades 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8. According to KNEC's guidelines and schedule for the 2026 school-based assessment (reference KNEC/GEN/TD/SE/SBA/GUI/2026/03, dated 14 August 2026), schools could access the assessment tools on the KNEC Competency-Based Assessment (CBA) portal from 28 September, administer and mark them, and upload learners' scores by 23 October 2026. KNEC also told schools to keep all assessment records.

Earlier in the year, Grades 4 and 5 also did KNEC projects. As Kenyans.co.ke reported, schools could access the 2026 Grade 4 and 5 project tasks from 2 March with an upload deadline of 29 May, which KNEC later extended to 18 June (The Star). Projects and written tests together make up the school-based record for the year.

How much the end-of-year assessments count

The weighting was set out in July 2026, when KNEC directed schools to verify the school-based scores of their KPSEA and KJSEA candidates. As The Star reported, the KPSEA final score is 60% school-based assessment from Grades 4, 5 and 6 (20% each) and 40% the national assessment. The KJSEA final score is 20% KPSEA, 20% Grades 7 and 8 school-based assessment, and 60% the Grade 9 national assessment.

Two messages follow. For a Grade 5 or Grade 8 family, a large share of the next national result is already decided, so the holiday is the moment to fix gaps before the final year begins. For a Grade 4 or Grade 7 family, most of the score is still ahead, so there is plenty of time, and habits matter more than cramming. Our article on why Grade 7 and 8 exams already count towards KJSEA explains the junior school side in more detail.

How to read the end-of-year report

Most schools send home a report card at the end of Term 3. Reports vary between schools, but under CBC they usually show a performance level for each learning area: Exceeding Expectation (EE), Meeting Expectation (ME), Approaching Expectation (AE) or Below Expectation (BE), often with a teacher's comment. Our guides to reading a CBC report card and to the BE, AE, ME and EE levels explain the bands in detail. Here is a quick method.

1. List the learning areas at AE or BE. These are the holiday priorities. Choose no more than two.
2. Look for a pattern. Weakness across English, Social Studies and Science often points to reading, not to those subjects.
3. Read the teacher's comment for a specific skill. "Struggles with fractions" is useful. "Can do better" is not; ask the teacher what exactly.
4. Compare with Term 1 and Term 2. Rising from AE to ME over the year is real progress, even if not yet EE.
5. Ask the school one question before January: "Were all my child's school-based assessment scores uploaded to KNEC by 23 October?" A missing upload is hard to fix later.

If the report shows Below Expectation

A BE in one or more learning areas is worrying, but it is information, not a sentence. CBC performance levels describe where a learner is now against what the curriculum expects. Ask the teacher three things before the school closes: which sub-strands caused the difficulty, whether the learner was present for all the assessments, and whether any support was tried during the year. If a learner is at BE across several learning areas, especially reading-heavy ones, ask whether a reading or learning difficulty has been considered. Early screening can make a large difference, and our guide to special needs learners under CBE explains the routes available. Above all, keep the conversation with your child positive. A child who believes they are "a BE learner" stops trying; a child who knows that fractions are the problem can fix fractions.

One holiday routine for several children

Many families have two or three children in different grades. You do not need separate programmes. Set one shared hour, for example 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. on weekdays, when everyone does their own task at the same table. The older child can listen to the younger one read for ten minutes, which helps both. Keep each child's priorities written on a card so nobody argues about what to do. Shared routines are easier to keep going through a ten-week holiday than separate ones.

The ten-week holiday plan, by grade

The holiday runs from Monday 26 October 2026 to Friday 1 January 2027, according to the Ministry of Education's 2026 calendar as reported by People Daily. The plan below takes the first week as rest and eases off over Christmas, leaving about seven working weeks.

Grade 4 going into Grade 5

Grade 4 is the first year of upper primary, with more learning areas and more reading than lower primary. Over the holiday, the most useful thing is fluent reading. Twenty minutes a day of reading aloud, alternating English and Kiswahili, does more than any worksheet. Add ten minutes of times tables and some real-life Mathematics: telling the time, counting change at the kiosk, measuring ingredients. Our guide to the Grade 4 learning areas shows what Grade 5 builds on.

Grade 5 going into Grade 6

Next year is the KPSEA year, and 40% of the KPSEA score is already earned. The holiday is the right time to secure fractions, decimals and measurement, and to practise reading a passage and answering questions about it. Keep sessions to about an hour. When Term 1 starts, the Grade 6 school-based assessment begins counting too. KNEC has not yet published the 2027 KPSEA dates; we will cover them on our KPSEA hub when they appear. Our Grade 5 Term 3 guide lists what your child has just covered.

Grade 7 going into Grade 8

Grade 7 learners have just completed their first year of junior school, with nine learning areas and several new teachers. The holiday should consolidate, not race ahead. Pick the two weakest Mathematics sub-strands from the report and repair them with 30 minutes of worked examples a day. Finish one class reader. Do one practical project, such as a small vegetable bed for Agriculture and Nutrition or a measured drawing for Pre-Technical Studies. Browse our Grade 8 hub to see what is coming.

Grade 8 going into Grade 9

This is the most important holiday of the four. Next year is KJSEA, and 40% of the KJSEA score is already earned. Mathematics deserves the most time: in the first KJSEA in 2025, only 32.44% of candidates met or exceeded expectation in Mathematics, the lowest of the major learning areas, according to Citizen Digital. Start with a 45-minute audit, then repair the weakest sub-strands. Add a weekly composition in English and an insha in Kiswahili. In December, begin conversations about senior school pathways, because the next cohort will choose schools and combinations during Grade 9. Our guide to Grade 8 as the year before KJSEA sets out what must be secure.

A case study: two siblings in Machakos

Take Mwende, finishing Grade 8, and her brother Musyoka, finishing Grade 5, in Machakos. Their reports show Mwende at AE in Mathematics and ME elsewhere, and Musyoka at AE in English and Social Studies. Their mother first plans to send both to paid tuition. Instead, after a rest week, she sets one hour a weekday. Mwende sits a Mathematics audit, finds that algebra and percentages are the weak points, and spends four weeks on them. Musyoka's pattern suggests a reading problem, not a Social Studies problem, so he reads aloud for 20 minutes daily and answers three questions about each passage. By January, both start their national assessment years with their biggest gaps narrowed, at almost no cost.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Treating the end-of-year assessments as "just school tests". They are KNEC school-based assessments that count towards KPSEA and KJSEA.
• Not checking the upload. Ask the school whether all scores went in by 23 October.
• Trying to fix everything. Choose two priorities per child.
• Confusing a reading gap with a subject gap. Weakness across several reading-heavy learning areas usually means reading.
• Teaching next year's content. Consolidate this year's; teachers will cover next year's.
• No rest. Give the first week off.
• Assuming 2027 assessment dates. They have not been published. Wait for KNEC.

Resources for the holiday

A library card and a notebook will carry most of this plan. If you want structured practice, the KPSEA Complete Bundle for Grades 4 to 6 suits Grade 4 and 5 learners, and the KJSEA Complete Bundle for Grades 7 to 9 suits Grade 7 and 8 learners. Free practice is on our Grade 7 and Grade 8 revision pages, and our grade hubs for Grade 4 and Grade 5 list materials by learning area. For questions in the evening, Somo, our CBC AI tutor, explains answers step by step.

Frequently asked questions

Do the Grade 4 and 5 end-of-year assessments count for KPSEA?

Yes. KNEC's school-based assessment in Grades 4, 5 and 6 counts 20% each towards the KPSEA final score, according to KNEC's weighting reported by The Star in July 2026.

Do Grade 7 and 8 assessments count for KJSEA?

Yes. Grades 7 and 8 school-based assessment together make up 20% of the KJSEA final score.

When was the deadline for schools to upload the scores?

KNEC set 23 October 2026 as the deadline for uploading the end-of-year school-based assessment scores for Grades 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8, according to KNEC's guidelines dated 14 August 2026.

How long is the 2026 December holiday?

The Ministry of Education's 2026 calendar sets it from 26 October 2026 to 1 January 2027, about ten weeks.

When are KPSEA and KJSEA in 2027?

KNEC has not yet published the 2027 dates. In 2026, KPSEA ran from 26 to 28 October and KJSEA from 26 to 30 October.

Is holiday tuition necessary?

Not for most learners. About an hour a weekday of focused work at home, after a rest week, covers the priorities in this guide.

Conclusion

The end of the year in Grades 4, 5, 7 and 8 is quieter than in Grades 6 and 9, but it matters. The assessments your child sat this term were KNEC school-based assessments that count towards KPSEA and KJSEA, and for Grade 5 and Grade 8 learners, 40% of the next national score is already earned. Read the report by learning area, choose two priorities, confirm with the school that the scores were uploaded, and use the ten-week holiday for a rest week followed by about an hour a day of reading and Mathematics. That is how a quiet holiday sets up a strong national assessment year.