Report exposes how 8-4-4 ruins the youth

The Education ministry on Wednesday blocked the release of a report exposing the mass failures in Form Four examinations over the last four years.

Education permanent secretary Karega Mutahi said he was uncomfortable with the report by Steadman Group, which shows that more than half of the 1.3 million candidates who sat the Form Four exams had obtained mean grades of between E and D+.

The move threw into disarray the ongoing Kenya Secondary School Heads Association meeting with at least three senior parastatal bosses leaving Mombasa without addressing the 4,000 teachers as planned.

Presentations by the Kenya National Examinations Council chief Paul Wasanga, Kenya Institute of Education director Lydia Nzomo and Teachers Service Commission chairman Ibrahim Hussein – listed as discussants to the report – were suspended because the officials had been scheduled to discuss the findings of the Steadman report.

A copy of the report seen by the Nation, showed that 596,895 candidates attained D+ and below in KCSE examinations over the past four years.

The report entitled: Where are the Ds and Es? Does Our Education System Make or Break Them? was to be presented by Steadman business development director Maggie Ireri at the invitation of the secondary school heads association.

The report showed that at least 100,000 candidates of the average 300,000 who sit the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations annually do not attain the minimum entry grade for tertiary education.

The study showed that half of the 304,000 candidates who took the exams last year scored below D+ mean grades.

The study also traced the candidates in their post-school employment activities and established that three out of 10 were self unemployed while 29 per cent were unemployed.

It sampled 2,262 respondents who were aged between 24 and 35 years old. Some 31 per cent were self employed while 26 per cent were in formal employment. The study showed that 10 per cent of the unemployed Form Four graduates were not looking for a job at all.

The study was meant to move forward a debate started by Kenya National Secondary Schools Heads Association chairman Cleophas Tirop who, on Monday, said the 8-4-4 system was wasting away a whole generation.

Mr Tirop had said that nearly half of the Form Four candidates over the past four years were flat failures. According to the study, 18,798 Form Four candidates had scored a mean grade of E, meaning they scored just one point in each of the seven subjects tested by the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations.

Mr Tirop had questioned the validity of national examinations, saying they failed to test candidates properly. “This raises serious questions on curriculum delivery in our schools,” he said.

“Our schools are churning out thousands of idle youngsters who do not even try to do anything positive for their lives.” Unless the trend is checked, schools would end up being agents of producing idlers, muggers and drug addicts, he said.

According to the study, 151,211 students scored grade D+ and below in last year’s KCSE results, representing a 50 per cent failure rate. The number of students scoring an average of D+ and below has been 45 per cent since 2004 except in 2007 when it dropped by two points to stand at 43 per cent.

Only 20,799 scored mean grades of A- with 39,908 candidates scoring average grades of B+, according to the statistics. A mean grade of D plain recorded the highest number of scorers — 215,666.

Meanwhile, Prof Mutahi ran into trouble on Wednesday after he told head teachers that they were earning more allowances than civil servants.

The hall murmured in disapproval but he said: “It is like you want what you have (allowances) to be taken away.” A harmonised salary for the teachers that helped bring them on the same level with civil servants came into effect on Wednesday.