KCSE: The dying giants

The Education ministry has launched an investigation into poor performance in national exams by the giants of yesteryear.

The audit, which Education minister Sam Ongeri termed “a normal post-mortem” of the just released Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exam results will seek to explain why former giants such as Njiiri’s, Shimo La Tewa, Bishop Gatimu, Ngandu, among others, have fallen so low.

“We are analysing the results to find out the reason,” acting permanent secretary Magdalene Wambua told the Nation. At least 15 schools that used to dominate the top slots in the KCSE and the defunct O and A level exams have fallen into academic oblivion.

Whereas schools such as Alliance, Starehe, Alliance Girls and Moi High Schools Girls have been consistent, some of their former peers have no candidates among the top performers not just nationally, but in their provinces as well. The Kenya National Examinations Council does not rank schools any more, only candidates.

Current school rankings are obtained by working out which school has the most students in the top lists nationally and regionally. A school without a candidate in the top lists could still have had a good performance. But schools such as Alliance Boys which had four candidates in the list of top 10 candidates nationally and 46 in the top 100 in Central Province certainly did well.

At the Coast, Shimo La Tewa, which used to be one of the best schools in the country has sunk so low in its performance, an average of 5.9 in last year’s exam. This means the average candidate scored a C plain. It has no candidate in the top 100 nationally, and only one in the top 100 in Coast Province.

Some of the national heavyweights who went to Shimo-la-Tewa are former Speaker Francis ole Kaparo, former Chief of General Staff (Rtd) General Joseph Kibwana, former Cabinet minister Noah Katana Ngala and Trade minister Amos Kimunya.

In Central, Njiiri’s Boys and Ngandu are shadows of their former selves. In the 1990s, Njiiri’s was ranked among the top 10 schools in the country. In last year’s KCSE, it did not even have a single candidate in the top 100 in Central Province. The school has been rocked by indiscipline and claims of mismanagement.

Bishop Gatimu, which was once ranked position seven in the KCSE, has had unimpressive results since 2004. It has no candidate in the top 100 nationally in last year’s KCSE, but it had three in the national female’s list. It’s mean performance, 9.9, was, however, not bad.

Responding to questions about troubles in big schools, Prof Ongeri said the ministry was conducting a “normal audit that would provide a post-mortem of the exam results”. “We always want to take action after studying the results of individual schools; some of the giants may still have had fantastic results,” he said.

He described exams as competitive, adding that it was expected that new giants would be born. The new giants include St Joseph’s Kitale, Nguviu Boys in Eastern, Maasai Girls, Kajiado, and Mary Hill Girls, a national school on the recovery path. Prof Ongeri said he had directed all provincial directors of education to steer the audit of schools’ performance.

Board wrangles

On Njiiri’s High School, Prof Ongeri said the ministry had replaced the institution’s board after it became clear wrangles were part of the problem. “I even sent my permanent secretary to the school recently to sort out the mess,” he said. He said discipline in schools contributed to good performance.

Mwingi South MP David Musila told Parliament on Thursday said that some schools were performing poorly because they had inadequate numbers of teachers. “As other schools celebrate, some of us cannot,” he said. “How does the government expect them (schools) to perform well when they have no teachers?” he asked, calling on Education ministry to ensure adequate distribution.

There is shortage of nearly 70,000 teachers, 25,000 of them needed in secondary school. On Tuesday, Prof Ongeri blamed poor performance in the sciences on the shortage. A Nation investigation found that interference from school sponsors, overstaying of heads in one school and parochialism were the major causes.

Some communities demand that teachers from their areas head schools in the regions. Other academic giants that have not been performing as they used to include Kakamega High, where performance was muted after only two candidates scored an A and 23 had A minus in last year’s KCSE.

The school’ performance in the exam fell short of the 2008 results in which four candidates scored an A and 21 had an A minus. “Although our performance is good, we had expected better results than what we have but we will analyse the performance to establish where we could have gone wrong,” said principal Oliver Minish.

In Nyanza, schools like Cardinal Otunga Mosocho, which produced top professionals in the country including Kenya Airways managing director Titus Naikuni, Kenya Commercial Bank boss Martin Oduor-Otieno and publisher Barrack Muluka did not post any candidate in the national list of 100.

But other giants in the province that had gone under for years managed to make some sort of comeback in the just released KCSE results. In the North Rift, Saint Patrick’s High, Iten, is experiencing challenges that have seen its long standing success, suffer a blow.

Inadequate funding and an accommodation crisis resulting from the quota system are affecting examinations performance. “The school used to perform well during the scrapped “A” level system when it majored in science subjects, but the ‘O’ level results have not been all that impressive,” said Alex Oyuga, the principal.

Despite the challenges, Mr Oyuga said, the institution is once again picking up, having posted a mean score of 8.36 in last year’s KCSE up from 8.116 the previous year. In Machakos, KCSE giants in the greater Machakos region struggled to stay afloat as previous “small” schools stole the limelight.

In Mwala District, Vyulya Girls leaped forward to reclaim Position One among public schools, posting one of its most impressive performances in recent years in  a contest that saw one-time giants like Kabaa High school, Muthetheneni Girls and Masii Boys and Masii Girls tumble.