News
Giant’s decline blamed on the quota system
Posted Thursday, March 4 2010 at 22:27
St Patrick’s Iten was at one time one of the best schools in Kenya, both in academics and co-curricular activities. For many years, its students topped the country in mathematics and earned respect for being all-rounders.
But the school now faces challenges which have dimmed its once bright star. In the just released Kenya Certificate of Secondary School (KCSE) examination results, the school had no candidate in the top 100 nationally.
In the Rift Valley provincial list, it had only three in the list of top scorers, the first one ranked 25th. Inadequate funding, an accommodation crisis and the quota system are negatively affecting the academic standards of the institution, according to principal Alex Oyuga.
“The school used to perform well during the scrapped ‘A’ level system when it majored in science subjects but the ‘O’ level results have not been all that impressive,” he said.
Despite the challenges, Mr Oyuga said the school was on its way up again, having posted a mean score of 8.36 compared to 8.116 in 2008.
The school had registered 163 candidates and 109 of them are eligible to join university, compared to 60 last year. The students’ aggregate scores were listed as 4 A’s, 15 A-, 20 B+, 30 B, 29 B-, 35 C+, 17 C, 9 C- and 4 D+.
Mr Oyuga faulted the quota system of admission, saying it promoted enrolment of “weak” students to schools within the district, contributing to decline academic standards.
Funding
“Most schools risk admitting only students from the surrounding villages unless the quota system is reviewed to allow national integration,” Mr Oyuga said.
The quota system demands that 60 per cent of the students are admitted from within the district, 30 per cent from the rest of the province and 10 per cent from the rest of the country.
The principal also called for increased funding for subsidised secondary education, terming the Sh10,265 per student as too low. Mr Oyuga further said that the school, with a student population of 670 and 32 teachers, had to hire more staff, paid by board of governors.
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Submitted by micahjason007Posted March 06, 2010 11:01 PM
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Submitted by krugutt
Most of the former academic giants have fallen by the wayside because they were degraded from the national status of school classifications to district or provincial. The degrading affected the quality of teachers, resources, and the pool of students these schools received. On the other hand, the fact that the current national giants continue to dominate the headlines does not talk tell the whole story of academic gains! The approach the ministry of education and specifically KNEC should be utilizing should be guided by the question: Of-the-“A”-students-that-enrolled-in-these-institutions,-how-many-were-helped-to-keep-their-“As”-by-the-end-of-the 4-year learning? A-close-analysis-is-likely-to-reveal-that-a-sizeable-number-of-them-slipped-to-lower-grades-when-compared-to-the-districts-or-provincial-schools-which-helped-most-to-students-to-move-from-D+s-and-Cs-to-higher-grades! This-is-lost-when-we-focus-on-the-top-students-only!
Posted March 05, 2010 02:57 AM
RSS
It is upon the government to rescue the school. As a former `07 student, the school realy lacks teachers, learning materials and too much financial problems. Im calling the government and the school old boys to do something.