It’s highly unlikely number of As can be so few in KCSE

The ‘shock and awe’ of the Matiang’i phenomenon at the Ministry of Education continues to reverberate across the country.

Within one year of his appointment, the Education Cabinet Secretary, Dr Fred Matiang’i, has captured the imagination of many Kenyans with his forthright stewardship of various reforms in the education sector.

The latest of his earth-shaking moves at Jogoo House, Nairobi, being the surprise release of the 2016 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination results before the New Year. The release coming barely a month after the exam was concluded in November, last year, confounded all and sundry.

By this time in the pre-Matiang’i years, the air could ordinarily be abuzz with the chatter and blather of the KCPE analysis that were traditionally release just before the year ends followed by a ceremonial process of Form One selection.

But those were the days before Dr Matiang’i happened at the Ministry of Education and revolutionised matters examinations. Not only was the sudden announcement earth-shaking, the sheer dearth of A grades was equally stunning.

As we scanned the papers for news and views about the KCSE results, many were left wondering what to make of the whole matter of the exams conduct and release of results in just under two months. Some could not even decide which results were genuine and which ones fake; the current or the previous results?

The current results have been praised as the most credible and genuine. It has also been taken as a triumph over the rampant cheating and malpractices that had marred the 2015 examination and the preceding years.

MAGICAL IMPROVEMENTS

However, even as we cherish the apparent death of cheating in national exams and relish the victory over cartels, we need to be wary of complacency or the possibility of being carried away by the Matiang’i moment.

Looking at the results a pattern arises that could suggest an unnatural flow of things in the entire process. On the outset, there appears to have been a deliberate resolve to whittle down the number of As in the KCSE exam score sheet. For it is only the mean grades A that were affected.

Of the 574,125 candidates who sat the exam last year, only 141 (0.25 per cent) scored a mean grade of A. Has an A become too difficult to get or was there a latent operation, “ondoa A”, riding in the national anti-cheating crusade?

Take Alliance High School, for instance. In 2015, it had 207 As, but in 2016 it dropped drastically to a paltry 14 As. This was a massive 93 per cent drop in only 12 months. Yet the same school registered a significant rise in the other grades: From 92 A- (minuses) in 2015 to 142 in 2016, which represents 53.26 per cent increase and 29 B+ in 2015 to 91 in 2016, which is 62 per cent rise.

The same trend occurred in many other top schools, including Moi High School Kabarak that had a whopping 202 As in 2015 and a “weeping” two in 2016. Then things magically looked up in the other grades: 79 A- in 2015 and 93 in 2016; 7 B+ in 2015 to (take a deep breath) 117 in 2016.

What is the statistical magic here? Why would a school drop in only one category of scores and rise in all the others? If the 2015 results were not genuine due to runaway cheating then which grades were affected? What makes the As only suspect? Are we stigmatising only those who scored As and sanitising the other grades? Are there some who might have cheated and scored lower grades as well?

Listening to both CS Matiang’i and the Kenya National Examinations Council chairman, Prof George Magoha, talk about the exams and condemn exam cheating, they seem to have a dim view of A scorers. It is as though the grade is so unreachable that one can only get it fraudulently.

One hopes that the results are, indeed, genuine. But it is also unlikely that a mean grade of A can be so scarce in an exam free of cheating as to be counted only with the fingers of one hand. Perhaps education researchers can help us shed light on this.