James Pharaoh
22 March 2008
opinion
Nairobi — All human beings strive for recognition and moral support. This is why most strive to excel in everything they do for this acknowledgement.
But when this credit is unfairly denied or awarded, it kills the morale of the actors involved.
The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has been entrusted with examining young minds for a long time. At the end of the annual examinations, the council awards students certificates that show their performance.
These certificates are almost sacred since employers and institutions of higher learning use them to gauge the capacity of an individual.
This requires that the documents be highly credible.
While there have been a few hitches in KNEC examinations that many were willing to forgive, recent events have severely dented the image and credibility of the council.
For instance, when rampant cases of cheating, exam leakage or ambiguous exam questions are reported, people suddenly hold the exam results in question.
The final blow is the latest report of major technical errors in the grading system. Although KNEC has downplayed this by saying that an "insignificant" number of students (4,000!) were affected, this is unacceptable.
Yet the same council holds its certificates with such high esteem that in case you lose this vital document, getting another is an uphill task.
These are definitely not attractive aspects the organisation can boast of after many years of operation.
The other day, when a preliminary study indicated that top Kenya Certificate of Primary Education students go on to excel in secondary examinations, KNEC chief, Mr Paul Wasanga, had every reason to express delight. He quickly seized the opportunity to praise the council's testing system as "one of the best".
"Our system of testing has been vindicated since students who topped in KCPE are still among the top in KCSE," said Wasanga.
He went on to give the reason for this trend.
He argued that these students were mostly from hardship areas like North Eastern Province who excelled after joining schools equipped with better facilities.
But just before congratulatory messages could start pouring in the council office, grim information began to emerge concerning the credibility of the examinations.
Everything seemed terribly wrong with the national exams body.
It is said a person who moves a mountain begins by carrying small stones. If this is true, then Wasanga should also have explained why and how some top KCPE students fail to do well in KCSE.
Is it because of the rigid system of examining students or something else?
Beyond examination halls
One would also have expected the council boss to go a step further and disclose how the students who excel fare afterwards in the job market or at the institutions of higher learning.
Do they maintain their mark of excellence? Sometimes those who make it in life did not pass examinations with flying colours.
We should know whether their passing at the two levels was due to excelling or sheer luck.
And KNEC recently revealed in a performance evaluation report that even after eight years of primary education, most students could not apply what they learnt.
It has also been stated that some university graduates do not apply their skills in the job market.
Could this be blamed on the teaching and examination methods?
For example, on composition writing, the council says: "Majority of the compositions in English and Kiswahili presented lacked originality, were not well conceived and were full of cliches and misplaced sayings. And from the responses to essay questions, it was evident that some students might have applied direct translation from either Kiswahili or some Bantu languages."
The report adds that most KCPE candidates sit examinations without being able to read critically and express their ideas well in standard English.
Subsequently, we are left wondering: What were the objectives of the 8-4-4 system of education? Was it not supposed to create self-sufficiency? And, why has it taken the council more than 20 years, since the introduction of the system, to discover that students cannot apply what they learn?
Ms Maggie Kamau Biruri, regional director of International Child Resource Institute, Africa explains what she terms as "the missing link" in most education systems in Africa.
She says the Kenyan education system offers an examination-oriented approach to learning. This method compels children to endure long hours of rigorous schooling, cramming and memorising in order to attain white-collar jobs.
Back to the council's evaluation report, the blame game begins in earnest, with teachers taking a huge chunk for the mess. But teachers in turn shift the blame on the unproportional teacher-pupil ratio.
If we are keen on becoming an industrialised nation, we cannot afford to produce parrots or robots that cannot apply knowledge acquired. We must endeavour to produce intellectuals who can use what they have learnt to transform their society.
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