Interrogate KCSE results professionally

Critics of the overall Grade Achievement in the 2016 KCSE exam have been asking why there were only 141 (0.02 per cent) candidates who obtained an overall mean Grade A, and over 30,000 who obtained an overall mean Grade E

They are also worried that the number of candidates with minimum university entry qualification of mean Grade C+ and above was 88,929 (15.41 per cent) in the 2016 KCSE examination compared to 169,492 (32.23 per cent) in 2015.

They are squandering a precious opportunity to face up to the things that explain the dismal performance of the students.

Instead they are faulting the strictness with which the government administered the examination.

The government is spending billions of shillings to finance secondary education, particularly the education of children in the public school system.

According to the report of the Secondary School Fees Task force chaired Kilemi Mwiria, and appointed by former Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi in February 17, 2015, the governments spend Sh67.2 billion on capitation grant, teachers’ salaries, bursaries and grants, which is 39 per cent of the cost of secondary education, while households covered 61 per cent in the 2013/14 financial year.

The total spending by households on fees and other levies was Sh106 billion, amounting to a combined total spending by government and households of Sh173.2 billion.

The critics should raise legitimate questions in the light of the gravity of the topic involved and the billions invested in education from year to year.

They should ask whether Kenyans are getting value for the money they invest in education.

The critics, instead, chose to ignore the purpose of examinations — whether internal or external — in a national educational system taken as whole.

PROPER TEACHING
The purpose of an examination is to enable the policy makers to establish how well the students have been exposed to the knowledge, reasoning abilities, skills attitudes and values that the curriculum embody.

The examination results, whether they are internal or external provide facts and figures that inform the kind of policy interventions needed to address the weakness revealed or reinforce the strength.

Within a national curriculum is content, a body of knowledge that students ought to be exposed to during the four years in high school.

Not only must schools teach this content, or body of knowledge, but they must measure how successful each child is acquiring these skills.

According to the Oxfam Education Report, 2000, by Kevin Watkins, quality education is a by product of many factors.

It is comes about through the efforts of not only well-educated well trained teaching force, but teachers who are available in the classroom to deliver content to the learners.

It comes about, courtesy of  appropriate curriculum and good teaching materials, appropriate school environment and level of community participation in the education of their children.

But bad faith and obsession with A grade has clouded the debate on the 2017 KCSE results to focus on this critical variables in education.

Our critics of the KCSE results don’t seem to care whether the learners were taught in secondary school, “how to learn, solve problems, make judgment and apply the knowledge gained in a flexible and creative way”.

All that the 2017 KCSE examination results showed was that our education system is characterised by islands of excellence when we should be having a mountain range of excellence running across this nation.

We have an unacceptably isolated number of schools that provided quality and rigorous educational experience to a small number of students while the rest are short-changing our children.

Mr Buhere is Communications Officer, Ministry of Education. Email: [email protected]