Stakeholders raise hard questions over poor 2016 KCSE results

Worldwide, national examinations are treated with caution and seriousness given the implication results have for the candidates, the parents and the nation at large.

The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has been tasked with total management of 2.000 summative examinations Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) both affecting thousands of learners at the two levels of schooling. While KCPE leads learners to the secondary level, KCSE opens doors to the universities and mid level colleges.

For several years, KNEC has been riddled with accusations of malpractices with incidences of cheating being reported. In an effort to curb the vice, stringent measures have been put in place with minimum incidences of cheating; timely release of results and consequent early transition to the next levels.

While this move is commendable, the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) which is a professional education organisation brings the following observations to public attention and education stake holders.

The expectation is that the Ministry of Education will come in handy to address the concerns to disavow public speculation of malice as well as addressing the immediate consequences of mass failure recorded in the results.

PROCESS OF MARKING

i) Coordination of the marking scheme:

The Chief Examiner normally obtains dummies from schools at random. These dummies are used to coordinate the marking scheme. The Chief Examiner and Assistant Chief Examiner normally agree on the marks to award each dummies.

After they have settled on the marks, the Assistant Chief Examiner then proceeds to coordinate the marking scheme with Team Leaders until the same mark is arrived at with the Team leaders. The Team leaders then do the same with the Examiners under their jurisdiction.

Once the marking scheme has been agreed on, it is adopted. The marking then starts.

Once the marking starts, the Team Leader samples 10 per cent of marked scripts from his team and marks to counter check the marks and cautions on any deviations.

The Assistant Chief Examiner picks 10 per cent from the Team Leader and marks them and cautions any deviations.

The Chief Examiner also picks 10 per cent from the Assistant Chief Examiner and also cautions any deviations.

NB: Normally, the Examiners before reporting for marking are supposed to interact with the paper they are to mark. No paper was left in school for anybody to interact with it.

ii) Filling of marks in the mark sheet:

The Examiners are supposed to fill in the mark sheet provided by KNEC. The filling is normally counter checked in the same manner the marking is counter checked upwards, but this time round from the Examiners, it was taken straight to KNEC for feeding in the system.

After the exam marking is over, the markers normally go back around January to mark stray scripts. This time round, it was not clear when the stray scripts were marked.

iii) Award Ceremony:

This is presided over by the Chief Examiner of every paper. They look at the performance in their papers across the country and then propose on the grading system. This is meant to normalise the grades.

WHAT HAPPENED?

The step of normalising grades was missing in this year’s exam. Raw marks were graded and the grading system used was not known at all. The same grading system was used for all subjects, humanities and sciences.

This explains the many As in the humanities and hardly any in English and sciences that led to the poor performance amongst boys compared to girls since most girl schools don’t take the three sciences. Hence of the 88,000 C+ and above, 50,000 were girls and 38,000 were boys. This is attributed to the grading system.

There was no standardisation and moderation done at all.

It is also evident that the exams were hurriedly marked and released.

Apart from the massive errors in the computation of marks, it is clear that there was no cross checking done.

Apart from the errors in the examination questions, there was no verification, validation and poor conversion of marks.

There was also lack of coordination and consultation before the release of exam results.

Maybe this is because the marking was done with pre-determined marks.

It should be noted that examiners were not allowed to consult on the wide range of the marks before awarding them to students and in some subjects a pre-determined highest mark to be given was set.

The marking scheme was made deliberate for the students to fail.

Even in cases where the questions had been repeated from the previous KCSE past papers the marking differed sharply initially where 18 marks had been allocated. e.g; in Kiswahili, in the previous years, 2 marks were allocated for every point explained but in this year’s case, only 1 mark was allocated for both.

UNPRECEDENTED DISPARITIES

In some cases the examiners themselves could not raise the 18 points.

The huge disparity in the number of boys and girls who passed as a result of using one grading system for all subjects led to unprecedented disparities of 50,000 girls versus 38,000 boys with C+ and above.

Finally it was noted that many questions were repeated with deviations from previous marking. It is shocking that there was NO grade “A” in English subject in the whole country.

Our children need to know why their results this year are so different. The examination grading policy seems to have changed abruptly. Why change the rules of the game after the game is over. It was wrong for KNEC to avoid a crucial step of processing results. This is the Award Ceremony that could help in moderating the grades and grading system.

KNEC owes the Kenyan public an explanation as to what exactly was different this year other than the explanation that there was reduced cheating.

As a country we must boldly ask ourselves these questions:

1 Why were there more students condemned to grades “E”, “D” and “D-”?.

2 Did they set the exams differently i.e. no stock questions?

3 Were questions asked within the syllabus?

4 What do we do to students who will not qualify for professional courses?

5 Is “failure” evidence of lack of cheating?

It makes no sense that 85 per cent of students stand no decent chance of joining the university. Remember only 88,000 scored C+ and above which is University entrance grade and yet the government has a capacity of 96,000 for university admission.

IMPLICATIONS:

Over 300,000 students who got “D”, “D-” and “E” grades will have their lives condemned for no good reason without justification.

Boys have been unduly condemned and denied their opportunities because of a grading that disadvantages the three Sciences and Maths opted for by many boys.

Note that many boys prefer the Sciences while girls prefer Social Sciences.

The government has a whole lot of 33,399 E’s, 149,929 D- and 112,135 D’s obtained by candidates who have n future at all.

The 2016 KCSE class will be disadvantaged in the job market forever.

Due to lack of moderation the students who are to be admitted to international universities will automatically miss their slots due to poor performance in English which is the key subject used to consider their admission.

Finally, without the provision of accurate data, schools that have been performing well will be labeled as cheats without any iota of evidence being put forward.

Career progression of school managers will be unfairly interfered with as exam performance will be used to appraise their work/job evaluation.

RECOMMENDATIONS
1) For fairness and justice to the candidates, KCSE results should be recalled to allow for moderation by the Chief Examiners in order to ensure credible grades of all the 2016 KCSE candidates.

2) A thorough and comprehensive audit be carried out on the whole handling of 2016 KCPE and KCSE administration, marking and processing of exams.