Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi has announced a special reward for public schools that produced top performers in this years KCPE examinations.

Speaking when he released the results at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) in Nairobi, Matiangi announced that public schools that have produced the top 100 candidates will receive special financial allocation to support their infrastructure.

He also disclosed that the head teachers of these schools will also be rewarded as well.

Matiangi noted the marked improvement in the overall performance of public schools.

The CS revealed the second best candidate came from a public school.

This year's top student scored 455 marks out of 500, an improvement from the highest scoring candidate who had 437 marks in 2016.

"All students who scored 400 marks and above will be placed in national schools regardless of whether they sat their exams in private or public schools," the CS stated.

According to the Kenya National Examinations Council Chairman Prof George Magoha, a total of 993,718 sat for the 2017 KCPE exams in 28,566 examination centres across the country.