Why it’s important for candidates to fail national exams

No sooner had the President and his deputy published an expensive success card on newsprint than this column nearly succumbed to the temptation to send best wishes to examination candidates.

That initial enthusiasm has only been momentarily stayed by the urgent needs of Kenya as a middle-income economy— exigencies that do not require too much success in national examinations.

None of the candidates who were carried aloft in celebration of their success in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination since the first lot that wrote the tests 30 years ago are sitting in the National Assembly nodding agreement to important legal proposals or in the Senate protecting devolution. None of those who were top of their classes in the secondary school examination are in the Cabinet by election or appointment, and certainly not in the courts.

Save for a few banks that have been giving scholarships to top, but poor performers, no official energies have been focused on them.

Unless you intend to be stuck in the bulk teller room counting greasy banknotes for honest land buyers, passing examinations is no way to get ahead in Kenya—or even to be great.

The government is not giving bright students who succeed in their examinations loans to carry out research, run experiments, create art or even invent a new wheelbarrow. It worries a great deal about people who do not succeed too wildly in their examinations.

When the Ministry of National Planning and Devolution sets aside Sh6 billion each year for the Uwezo Fund, bureaucrats have no intention of going around villages looking for people who scored high marks in their examinations to give them start-up loans. When the highest number of job vacancies opens up, it is not the brightest and the best that are required to apply.

POLICE QUALIFICATION

Recently, when the National Police Service Commission wanted to recruit 10,000 officers, it lowered the entry requirement to a Grade D+ in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination, down from the regulation Grade C.

The Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces, who is responsible for the recruitment of a similarly large number of men and women into the Army, Navy and Air Force, says people who score high grades do not make very good soldiers.

They are not looking for A students to serve in the Prisons Service, the Kenya Wildlife Service, or the Kenya Forestry Service. Together, the disciplined forces have close to 20,000 jobs for people who do not succeed too much in examinations.

The revamped National Youth Service, which targets to recruit 20,000 youth each year and equip them with life skills— and perhaps open a door into the disciplined services as well as other jobs— is not looking for people who have scored excellent grades in their examinations. If you score an A in your examination, you will have scant chance of feeding on government rations until you are fit enough to stomp onto a puddle of water and splay it into a million droplets. You need a Grade D+ for that.

Unless one intends to work outside Kenya, there is not much use in putting one’s intelligence on display. Given the prevailing situation in the country, succeeding in national examinations can easily mark you out as someone who is undeserving of official assistance.

So, instead of sending candidates wishes for success in the ongoing national examinations, this column only echoes the motto of the new National Youth Service: Go on, be great— but first, you have got to flunk your examinations.

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