According to Piaget, formal operations means ones ability to perform mental operations with abstract, intangible concepts such as justice or poverty or mankind and be in a position to provide a satisfactory explanation. The focus of this investigation was combinatorial reasoning among secondary school students in Kenya. The sample comprised 150 boys and girls selected from two secondary schools in the City of Nairobi, Kenya, who were administered a questionnaire on combinatorial reasoning. The results showed that the majority of participants were either at concrete operations or were at the transitional stage. Only 30 per cent had a good mastery of combinatorial reasoning ability. Such observation brought into question Piaget’s notion that cognitive development theory is universal. Furthermore, the finding confirmed the view that many secondary school students are not operating at the formal operations stage.

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