Rethink education, exam structure

Parents buy books at Savanis Book Centre, Nairobi on December 28, 2017. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Someone must be called to answer to this before we drown an entire generation in the swamp of substandard education.
  • The resolve by some murky Kenyans to leak or cheat in the examinations is even a bigger manifestation of this metastatic corruption.
  • We must change our system of examination, this should start by reducing the premium we put in a single examination.
  • Our education must therefore be taken seriously and no room should be given for any corrupted or substandard learning materials to reach our children.

On the front page of the Monday 15th October, 2018 Daily Nation, there is a small headline clip referring readers to the back page ‘Parents fury forces G2 book recall’ on the back page where the full story on this recall is carried, there is another story describing the preparations for the KCSE national examinations that are just about to begin in a few days.

According to this news item, most of the preparation is geared towards the prevention of cheating in these national examinations.

These two stories highlight issues that affect our education system; the first one is the concern raised by parents regarding the quality and content of materials in the new curriculum which appeared hollow and shallow by propagating cheap materialism and comical illustrations like teaching children that the function of the human head is for carrying loads (wish it was referring to loads of knowledge).

The second story is about the concern of the ministry regarding the potential deliberate and unlawful early exposure of examination materials that is being plotted by some desperate parents, disgruntled teachers and student.

SECURE EXAMS

On the surface assessment, this appears to be a problem confined to our education sector, but unfortunately the rot runs much deeper and will require much more than recalling substandard learning materials from the curriculum or calling out the police officers from leave to come and secure our examinations from ourselves.

Let us start with this botched new curriculum; this curriculum is the foundation of our education and what we learn defines who we are, in fact there is nothing more colonising than education hence my writing this opinion article in English!

Our education must therefore be taken extremely seriously and no room should be given for any corrupted or substandard learning materials to reach our children. Who has permitted or given leeway for this mediocrity to get to our children?

It is only possible through corruption; instead of engaging credible scholars and academicians to review the content and quality of the learning materials this critical work must have been delegated to unqualified persons or was simply ignored and resources channelled elsewhere.

CORRUPTION

Someone must be called to answer to this before we drown an entire generation in the swamp of substandard education.

The resolve by some murky Kenyans to leak or cheat in the examinations is even a bigger manifestation of this metastatic corruption.

The question is; why would parents want their child to steal the examinations instead of working hard to achieve genuinely good or fair grades?

Under normal circumstances, in a society where skills and knowledge is required to earn a living, every parent would wish the child to get the knowledge and skill.

They would not purchase a fake certificate if they wanted their child to succeed in a skilled professional career, because they will have to perform the actual job so as to earn from it.

SECURE JOBS

However, in a corrupt system academic papers are only tools required to secure jobs in offices where there is no actual work done.

In such settings, skills and knowledge are of little relevance and therefore parents and individuals are lured to buy certificates or cheat in examinations.

Such is the case with politicians whose actual work does not require much skill or critical thinking but guarantee high returns with minimal accountability.

Our education has become a fake currency which if allowed to circulate freely, destroys the country’s economy at the end of the day since people are able to get it without actual work.

How then do we solve these problems? We must get back to the root cause; the heavy presence of security in our examinations will only act as a temporary measure but eventually raise the premium just like what happens in drug trafficking.

CHANGE SYSTEM

The work Cabinet Secretary for Interior Fred Matiang’i and George Magoha are doing or have done is commendable; however, it is unfortunately not sustainable.

We must change our system of examination, this should start by reducing the premium we put in a single examination.

There should be several assessments at different levels and Universities and Colleges should conduct entry tests in addition to the minimum grades attained in the national examinations.

On the other hand our society must offer better pay to productive and innovative skills that have measurable returns than those that simply require display of certificates, this will make pursuit of knowledge and skill more lucrative and people will be more interested in acquiring knowledge and skills instead of stolen grades.

STATE OF EMERGENCY

These tentacles of corruption are not only chocking the elementary education, but are also getting entrenched in the University education where the single yardstick for progression according to the Commission for University Education (CUE) has become PhD that are now being churned out in a conveyer belt but with little to show in terms of knowledge translation.

It is time to seriously rethink our entire education and national examination system especially when soon we are going to have the government declare a state of emergency during national examinations.

Dr Odhiambo is a senior lecturer, College of Health Sciences, the University of Nairobi. [email protected].