Employers can help Kenya shift focus from 'paper' qualifications to actual skills

Exam cheating is not unique to Kenya. It is not worse in Kenya than elsewhere in the world.

A Stanford University study shows that 73 per cent of all test takers in the US do cheat at some point, for grades, rather than education, have become the major focus of many students.

“While about 20 percent of college students admitted to cheating in high school during the 1940's, today between 75 and 98 percent of college students surveyed each year report having cheated in high school.”

In Norfolk’s Wymondham College, Jonathan Taylor, the principal, was taken to court for presiding over “a culture of cheating” and “exam fraud” in GCSE-controlled assessments.

At Southern University, Louisiana, an assistant registrar had been changing grades for several years. He passed some 540 students in 2,500 illegal transactions.

News.com revealed last year that several prestigious universities in Australia were shocked to find their own certificates being forged and sold by a sophisticated Chinese firm.

“Overseas Students Assistant HD” operates in the Chinese language and advertises all major Australian universities’ qualification certificates for anything between $3,500 and $ 5,700, depending on the quality of the copy requested.

South Africa has also been badly hit. At the University of Zululand, a corruption cartel inside the university awarded 4,000 students with fake degrees in the last 20 years. The plotters garnered the equivalent of some Sh3 million.

CHEATING CULTURE

Cheating in Kenya’s national examinations had got out of hands. But the problem is deeper than just KCPE or KCSE. It affects cheating teachers and crooked students with parental accomplices.

The cheating culture points at an inverted value system. There are two kinds of professionals — entrepreneurs and labourers. The former creates jobs and the latter gets them. No matter where you fall, you need money.

Dr Vincent Ogutu puts it in simple terms. Most investors or employers trust paper more than words. They ask for a certificate, the “paper”, and do not assess the skill. This means that unless I have the “paper” I cannot get the job or I cannot gain the trust of the investor or lender. If I do not have the “paper” … I am nobody.

That “paper” proves to the world that I should get a job or gain the trust of a prospective lender or investor. We have focused on the paper. This creates a terrible anxiety.

IDLE ARMY

Last week I said that our education system cannot absorb 482,232 students into technical colleges, because these colleges are not there. What do we do with them? Where will they go?

Eastlands College of Technology offers fascinating courses, such as electro-mechanics, automotive engineering, plumbing, welding and fabrications, and electrical wiring.

The Nairobi Technical Institute offers courses in applied sciences. The Kenya Christian Industrial Training Institute, the Textile Training Institute, Edu-Global Training Institute, etc. also offer an impressive array of possibilities.

These technical colleges located throughout the country may absorb less than 200,000 students. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, our teacher training colleges have a student population of 40,000. Our technical training colleges can accommodate 150,000.

This leaves roughly 292,000 Kenyan boys and girls out of the system, with no hope in life. This is the hard truth after 12 years of formal education.

These 292,000 young men and women have been suddenly added to the dejected force of a society rapidly building an idle army. Violence and manipulation will be their motto.

It is as if they had been preparing themselves for a lottery for 12 years and they just lost; it’s over. Something is wrong in the system. These young men and women have nothing to lose… They are destined to fail, condemned to poverty, ignorance… and manipulation.

This is not Matiang’i’s fault. This has been going on for years. It just became more prominent in recent days due to greater transparency and honesty in exam setting and marking.

MORE PRISONS, FEWER SCHOOLS

It is scary and dangerous to condemn almost 300,000 Kenyan youths to the grim picture of no future. This explains why our prisons have already become so overcrowded, with an occupancy level of 343.7 percent. At this rate, we should start building more prisons and fewer schools.

In 2014, Kenya had almost 10 million children in primary school, according to a 2014 report by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2.3 million in secondary school, and 443,800 in university. Only 46 per cent of those children who started primary moved to secondary school. What happens to the other 54 percent who did not find a place in secondary school?

As the years go by, the future turns bleaker. Out of the 571,161 candidates who sat the KCSE exam in 2016, only 88,929 have met the minimum requirements for university admission in 2017.

This means that only 7.4 per cent of children who start primary education in Kenya will qualify to university. About 54 per cent fell out at the end of primary school, and 47 per cent at the end of secondary.

Our education system was designed for the minority. This minority will not drive the economy; it will not push the country forward. This minority is composed of thinkers and architects of the future, of policy drivers; they are the drivers of social change.

But every driver needs passengers. We cannot have a system planned just for drivers. We seem to have forgotten that a robust and sustainable middle class is not built by university graduates, but by successful farmers, carpenters, plumbers, computer technicians…small entrepreneurs, people who produce and innovate.

Our education system is a conveyor belt for the minority, for those who have academic qualities, for intellectuals, but we have squeezed everyone through it, and made children believe that whoever does not get an A is a failure.

We have transformed minorities into majorities, and in the process, we have destroyed the morale and dreams of thousands of young people who erroneously think they are good for nothing.

No young man or woman should despair. Giving up is not an option. Nowadays information is available at our fingertips. Javelin champion Julius Yego trained himself by watching YouTube videos.

Employers can also help prevent the bubble from bursting, by testing for skills rather than judging by the “paper” or certificate produced. I would advise every employer to watch a recent USA Today feature on how 2.5 million new middle-skill jobs will be created in 2017.

This new approach will help to ease the pressure from academic performance, from the “paper”, and focus on actual skills, no matter where and how they were learnt.

The government has the crucial task of acting as a facilitator. Governments do not create jobs, they just create the conducive environment and put people together, connect them. That is how a sustainable economy is built.

Dr Franceschi is the dean of Strathmore Law School. [email protected]; Twitter: @lgfranceschi