We don’t change education systems because they are fatally flawed but for better results

Ask a group of school-goers in Kenya or Uganda a simple competence-based English language question. The question, which you can pose at any level in our education systems, is: “How are you?”

The likelihood is that a large percentage, if not a majority, of your test group will fail that question. Do you want to bet? Maybe we will get to that. But let us first look at the complex “competence-based” concept in education.

I kept looking for an opportunity to ask my friend and former colleague, Dr Fred Matiang’i, when he was the line CS, for his own definition of “competence”. However, now that he has moved on to other things, it would not be fair to subject him to classroom interrogations. As for our highly-respected former chief diplomat, it would be only fair to let her familiarise herself with our chalkboard affairs before we seek her position and views.

Fortunately, we have a great deal of statements and views, from policy-makers, teachers and other stakeholders, to guide us in our reflections on this competence-based approach, and on education in general. Indeed, it is the wealth of these expressions that motivated me to contemplate, again, the many educational experiments that I have witnessed in my life.

My own stake in the matter has been, and still is, big. As with many others of my age, my school days were impacted by the many patterns and changes in our systems. We had, for example, the KAPE, KJSE and other decisive levels in Kenya, or the PLE and JSLC of Uganda, which was a kind of 6-3-4 school model, ending with the “Cambridge” School Certificate examinations. Then you entered Makerere, for a two-year “Preliminary Course” that prepared you for the three-year degree course.

By the time I took my “Cambridge” in 1962, the preliminary course had been pushed out of Makerere, down to deserving secondary schools, mostly called “colleges” or high schools. At the end of the two years there, you took the Cambridge Higher School Certificate (HSC) tests, qualifying you for university.

A FEW YEARS AFTER INDEPENDENCE

A few years after independence, the Cambridge system was replaced by the East African Certificate of Education (EACE) and its advanced level (EAACE) extension, for which I was an examiner in the 1970s. When the East African Community went dormant in the late 1970s, the EA system was replaced with the various national systems on which we are still playing variations and adaptations.

There are two points to this loquacious narrative. The first and more obvious one is to persuade you of my lifelong intimate involvement in and with these educational experiments. To say that I feel strongly, even passionately, about them would be an understatement. They have determined not only the kind of person I am — since we are all largely products of the education we receive — but also, literally, the way I live. As a teacher, lecturer, trainer, examiner and materials developer in the various systems, I live on education.

From this angle, I know that major changes in the educational system are both an opportunity and a nuisance. They are an opportunity in the sense that they challenge us to think and re-think our aims, our materials and our methods. They also stimulate us and our publishers to produce (and sell) new teaching and learning materials for the significant clientele of our fellow teachers and their learners.

The nuisance aspect of changes is that they jolt us out of our comfort zones. Teachers and other stakeholders get so accustomed to a given system that they more or less put it on “autopilot”. In other words, we may get so used to the routine that we appear to “achieve” results without really trying. Even if the results are patently unsatisfactory, as has been reflected, for example, in the hue and cry against the pathetic English language inarticulateness of final examination candidates in both Kenya and Uganda, we are tempted to turn around and blame the shortcomings on the system.

This brings us to the second and more important point we should note, even as we struggle with the challenges of implementing new systems, like the competence-based syllabus.

The point is that these reviews and adjustments in our curriculum structures, content and methods are necessary and inevitable. This is because “education” means “leading (our charges) out” into the world, and the world is always changing. A useful education has to be adaptable and adaptive to the changing world.

My Educational Psychology professor in Dar-es-Salaam, Dr Klinghoffer, used to say that all education is a continuous experiment. The challenge is that we are actually experimenting with human beings. We must thus endeavour to ensure that the experiments do not go haywire and fatally affect the lives of those whom we are trying to educate. That is the justification for continuous adjustments.

Proposing a new system does not necessarily imply that the old or existing system is faulty or that it has failed. I, for example, do not believe that the 8-4-4 system was an unmitigated “disaster”, as some detractors want to portray it. My own children and many of my students were brought up in it, and they are successful national and international leaders and professionals. Their success cannot have been “in spite of” the 8-4-4. I also insist that its making our national language, Kiswahili, a core subject through the school system was a precious gift to our national identity.

It is obvious, however, that in a rapidly technologising world, dominated by smartphones, social media and WhatsApp, the teaching of language, for example, has to be drastically revised. The same is true of any subject you may name. Demonstrable, hands-on skills have to be emphasised in all our content and methods. These are challenges to both teachers and learners, but therein lies the joy of our profession.

Back to our competence-based question, anyone who answered with a plain “Fine” failed. Please ask a competent language teacher for an acceptable answer. Thank you.

Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and Literature. [email protected]