These are my thoughts. Hizo str8 As ni mingi tu sana!
Why is it the case? Like in Kapsabet HS, there were 75 A plains out of about two hundred and fifty students.
What has changed, compared to the 90s?

in my time the top 5 guys or so nationwide got A minuses

They have recycled questions so many times that schools have mastered the trend and can easily predict what's coming in the next exam. My high school math teacher could set paper 2 exam after we have done paper one., that's what he told us. As for the practicals, schools get instructions and list of required apparatus months before the exam. From there hence forth, it's drilling and no learning. We are after A's. Quite a number of these guys drop out of the nice science based programmes or end up balancing books if at all they make it through.

I once saw the same discussion in UK and they were saying that some of the best students currently could not do an average math of the past 20 years. Not sure what has happened in our case but of course with the many available past papers compared with what was available when the 8.4.4 was new, it easy for teachers to become better in helping students pass. The problem is that it is not now easy to pick the best of the best from everyone else who has an A. I understand about 2,600 nationally have plain A's. I understand in the first KCSE, Only one guy nationally had a mean grade of A. I know someone who went to do medicine with mean grade B+

CONveyer belt to campus and life. Sad!