Wachira Kigotho
26 March 2008
Nairobi — The probe committee appointed by the Ministry of Education to investigate the grading of the last year's Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) reflects serious malpractice problems that have surrounded national public examinations body for several years.
Prof Raphael Munavu, the chairman of the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) said the probe committee would specifically look into the faulty calculation of mean grades that affected more than 4,000 candidates.
But restricting the committee to probe only the aggregate grades is to simplify an issue that has already compromised the validity and reliability of the KCSE in the eyes of the public. It may have been a negligible hitch as Education minister, Prof Sam Ongeri, said last week, but the crux of the matter is, if no lasting solution is found students, parents, schools and universities are likely to question the efficiency and even acceptability of KCSE as a selection tool to higher education.
The examination plays multiple roles in our education system beyond selecting students for further education. Dr Thomas Kellaghan, an educational researcher at the St Patrick's College in Dublin, says the examination and other public examinations in Africa provide clear goals and standards for teachers and students. "KCSE is perceived to allocate scarce educational benefits in an objective and unbiased say," he says in a World Bank report on public examinations, assessment and educational policy in sub-Saharan Africa.
The confidence the general public has on national examinations is constantly being eroded as a result of a wide range of malpractices that emerge each year. In the examination in question, 1,875 candidates were implicated in cheating and their results cancelled. Among other malpractices reported in the last five years include poor test design and construction, leakages, impersonation and smuggling of notes into the examination room.
But whereas most of the unethical malpractices could have been instigated by forces and individuals indirectly related to the KNEC, the matter currently under scrutiny is directly related to the council officials. It directly points out inefficiency of the council's psychometric specialists and computer programmers.
Indeed miscalculation of mean grades was not a problem that poped from nowhere. Red flags were raised when the computer produced several schools with an average score of more than 11 points. Since the commencement of the examination in 1989, no school before had ever attained a mean score of 11 and above. Although, it would not have been strange for one, two or three top schools to score that high, it would have been prudent for psychometric specialists to have done manual checks just to confirm the results.
Paul Wasanga, the chief executive officer of Knec, argued that the problem was nothing but a computer error. He admitted he was not a computer specialist and probably would like his computer manager to take the responsibility. But as an expert in examinations assessment, Wasanga and his team of experts should have tried to understand even remotely, the type of technology in use and its capacity to process information.
Computer experts said there is nothing like 'computer error'. All that exists is human inefficiency and incompetence. "Feed the computer with the data and with the right software, you will get the results you anticipated," says Mr Anthony Njogu, a computer specialist with a data consulting firm in Nairobi.
However, Njogu warns that slight tampering with the software might trigger multiplicity of errors that are often blamed on the computer. "Like so many other machines, computers are tools to make work easier, but the human beings are the ones in-charge," he says. In this case, if the computer was instructed to calculate the mean scores, but did otherwise, programmers at the council should explain.
But this should not to absolve Wasanga and other education officials from their responsibilities. The days when examination officers could have explained their inefficiency to 'computer errors,' and other 'systems failure' are no longer here.
"Kenyans like elsewhere in other African countries are experiencing a renewed sensitivity to the context of an assessment," says Dr Joseph Mbithi Kivilu, head of socio-economic surveys at the Human Science Research Council in South Africa.
The former lecturer and educational researcher at Kenyatta University argues the new motivation to understand reporting of examination results is rooted in the perceived education's capacity to increase people's choice and action to shape their lives.
Whenever results are announced, candidates who are deemed to have passed well celebrate their success with parents and teachers, quite often promising to study for professions that are often beyond their ability and grades. For instance, a student recently said he wanted to be an actuarial scientist but when asked what that was, he said it was advanced study of fish and their habitat. The student, who had a mean grade of B, was the best student in a day school in western Kenya and had a C-minus in mathematics.
Cases of parents urging their children to aim for medicine, law and engineering is often frustrating for students and teachers in schools with limited resources.
"Too often schools and teachers are held accountable for their students' performance as reflected in the KCSE," says Mbithi. Undoubtedly the use of examination results to make teachers and schools answerable is magnified when results are published. KCSE and the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education are high stakes examinations and success in them can have profound immediate and long-term impacts on a candidate's life. "Success in KCSE represents the sole avenue for poor students to escape menial jobs in the rural areas," says Kellaghan.
Bearing this in mind, many candidates and their parents are keen to engage in various corrupt tactics to ensure that their children 'pass' KCSE. For this reason KNEC and the Ministry of Education cannot afford to continue with the business as usual attitude in matters related to KCSE results.
But as the committee chaired by Prof Olive Mugenda, the Vice-Chancellor of Kenyatta University, starts to investigate faulty grading there is need to examine issues related to KCSE that may have impact negatively on students' access to higher education.
The committee should examine whether KNEC has the capacity to manage public examinations. Over the years, education in thas expanded, but the main worry is whether the council has been left behind.
Of great concern is its computing unit, which blundered and failed to provide accurate evaluation of candidates' aggregate grades. The leadership of the body also failed miserably in releasing the results before confirming basic statistics.
For most people, the issue is not basically the limited faulty calculation of the mean grades of candidates and schools, but whether the KNEC can be relied to design and construct high quality test papers and thereafter mark, moderate, standardise and maintain quality assurance without any fiasco.
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