No pride in KCSE exam mass failure

The results of 2016 and 2017 are hailed as presenting the true picture of students’ performance in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination.

The performance is said to be reflective of the fact that there was no cheating or malpractice.

However, the premises for these arguments need to be interrogated within a broader framework of the national population behaviour.

When did theft become a universal trait among Kenyans?

And when did failure in exams become a universal national trait?

HIGHER EDUCATION
The exam outcome is a strategy for confining Kenyans with university education to a select elite group.

This is something we sought to address with the 8-4-4 system and expansion of higher education.

Looking at the nature of the results, we have retrogressed to the pre-8-4-4 system, when a small group of Kenyans from selected schools went to the university.

I went to school during this period and I really feel for my age-mates who are now approaching their sixties and were locked out of the education system.

I feel for the large numbers of 18-year-olds who are being labelled as failures by this self-cleansing exam system.

NURTURE
We complain that we have too many universities. However, this is not the way to deal with the issue.

Our children are not diseased parts of the bodies whom the surgeon-turned-examiner believes should be cut-off and thrown away.

I also do not think the current minister for education understands that schooling is a socialising process that is characterised by nurturing and character building.

No child should be labelled a failure because the adults have universalised theft.

This is a moral and legal issue that should be addressed as such but not by penalising innocent teenagers by marking them down.

MORALITY
I would like to refer to the key personalities in examination to re-read Prof Njoroge's book on philosophy education to see where I am coming from.

Education should advance humanity but not destroy the humanness in us by labelling 18-year-olds mass failures.

Let us sober up and restore national morality by punishing those who engage in criminal activities and malpractices rather than disenfranchise our youth by labelling them mass failures.

Education is not about averages; it is about making students become better versions of themselves.

The youth know they are being punished because of a crime they did not commit.

RESPECT TEACHERS
But this situation can be restored if the teaching profession is respected and teachers held with high esteem.

I am always at a loss why a magistrate is paid more than a head teacher — yet the teacher, if well motivated, could reduce the number of people arraigned before the magistrate!

As a nation, we need to address first things first and advocate for the teacher and stop treating teachers badly.

I am curious to know what the PhD thesis of the Teachers Service Commission chief executive Nancy Macharia was about.

Has it, in any way, contributed to improving the quality of teaching?

My student Lydia Midimo, in her MA thesis, showed that teachers do not want to be treated like lowly workers.

They want to use their creative energies in class management rather than be measured though ‘tick box’ performance contracting.

Dr Kinyanjui (PhD) is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Nairobi. [email protected].