TWO Activists, Albert Musasia & Jacob Opara in an act of rare courage in an incisive piece below make no frills about our education system. I reproduce their article here to tell the world that our exam-oriented education is anything but tragic. The story the results just released recently tell, is one of despair and trashed futures for thousands of children. That only 2 out of 10 students who sat for the KCSE exam qualify for a straight place in University. That 60% or a whopping 455,950 students scored D+ and below, meaning all these are complete failures according to our exam-centric measurement. To expect anything better would be naive when we all know the ministry imposed a crash program to cover course work of 3 terms in less than 5 months post COVID-19 and in the process experimented with virtual learning through YouTube, Radio and TV that neither teachers nor learners were prepared for. EDITOR
Albert Musasia & Jacob Opara
According to an article by Ifeoma Chime, titled “Top 10 African Countries with the Best Education Systems”, published in the African Scholar Magazine in September, 2019, the world economic forum assessed educational systems for 140 countries including 38 African countries. In this report, Kenya was ranked the 7th best country in Africa and the 95th in the world ahead of Brazil and India among others, in the global education ranking. Factors considered in this ranking included general work force skills, quantity, and quality of education, developing digital literacy, interpersonal skills, and the ability to think critically and creatively.
However, when you juxtapose this Kenya’s top ranking in Africa with the Kenya Certificate Secondary Education (KCSE) results recently announced, it is a laughable irony that somehow appears to go unnoticed in most of the public discourse around the performance of our education system. The KCSE 2020 results announced by the Cabinet Secretary for education, Prof. George Magoha, painted a sad reality of how normalized the gross failure of our system has become. More importantly, this normalization has numbed our civic duty to hold to account those who oversee the running of the education sector that is constantly returning massive failures.
Of what use is an educational system that gives you 60% failure rate? Mass failures of Kenyan students, and heartless destruction of their future continues even as President Uhuru Kenyatta and the cabinet Minister for education and others meant to support the youth rejoice and applaud their miserable legacy.
Let’s be clear; President Uhuru Kenyatta and Prof. George Magoha, just laid to waste lives and dreams of hundreds of thousands of Kenyan youths, the same group President Kibaki hoodwinked with the promise of “free Primary education”, only to pile them in overcrowded public schools without capacity or ability to support these learners’ educational needs as the elite took their kids to private academies.
On Monday May 10th, 2021, KCSE 2010 results were announced by Prof. George Magoha, at the KNEC Mtihani House in Nairobi. These results, hurriedly marked by protesting teachers and examiners, were anxiously awaited for, by candidates, their parents and the general public given the unprecedented circumstances under which they were held, and the complete disruption of the school calendar occasioned by COVID-19 pandemic.
Context for these unique circumstances and the backdrop against which these exams took place is important. On 15 March 2020, the government suspended learning in all schools barely three months after schools had opened for first term effectively disrupting learning for over 17 million learners across the country. Six months into the suspension and bogged by the pressure to balance the psycho-social challenges the extended suspension had on school going children on one hand and the risk of mass COVID-19 infection to learners on the other, the government directed a partial re-opening of schools for grades four and eight (for primary schools) and form four (for secondary schools) on 12 October 2020. The students allowed to return to school were preparing for standardized national examinations which were then set for March of 2021.
This partial reopening of schools was not without incidences. It was widely reported in local media that most of the schools at the county and sub-county levels did not have infrastructural and resource capacity to fully enforce the Ministry of Health issued return-to-school COVID-19 protocols. In addition, prior to this partial reopening, the Ministry of Education had issued directives requiring learners to continue undertaking their course work via virtual platforms such as YouTube and selected local radio stations. This, to many observers, was wishful thinking as majority of schools and parents did not have the technological and resource capacity to facilitate virtual learning for unsupervised learners and children in a completely untested scenario.
The context of undertaking learning processes in our schools under the COVID-19 pandemic was an uphill task to say the very least. The immense challenge of dealing with a crash program, requiring the covering of three term’s course work in less than five months, made worse the real psycho-social challenges learners had to face in dealing with all the economic and social disruptions COVID-19 pandemic had brought on them and their families for close to six months they were away from school. For instance, it was widely reported that close to 4,000 school-going girls were impregnated during the COVID-19 lock down. A considerable number of these girls, sat for KCSE and KCPE examinations in March 2021.
KCSE Results: The open secret of a failed system that no one is talking about.
So, on that fateful Monday morning, the abrasive and mean-looking CS for Education, Prof. Magoha in his characteristic way, announced the 2020 KCSE results with pride and pomp in Nairobi, shortly after briefing the President. And then local and social media was awash with jubilant parents and teachers carrying their high achieving children shoulder-high, singing songs of conquest for impressive results scored in the examination. Magoha spoke of how these candidates had performed even better than the previous year, praised girls for remaining competitive and engaged in the ridiculousness of celebrating the fewer cases of cheating that were reported. Indeed, congratulations to all young men and women who did exemplarily well in the exams are in order.
Besides meaningless back patting and effusive praises, a close examination of the results paints a very tragic reality for more than a half a million children. Let us look at some numbers released by the ministry of education in their 2020 KCSE Essential Statistics Report.
The report indicates that 893 candidates scored an overall grade of A, representing 0.12% of those who sat for the examination. This, the Ministry indicates was a 0.04% (actually, negligible) increase from the results in 2019 where 627 candidates scored a similar grade. A total of 143,140 candidates representing 19.0% scored mean grade of C+ and above scoring the minimum qualification requirements for university education. This means that 81.0% of candidates in 2020 KCSE results scored below C+ and therefore would not qualify to join a university in Kenya. In other words, just 2 out of 10 candidates would be able to pursue a university degree straight from high school.
More importantly, the report indicates that 455,950 candidates (60.6%), scored D+ and below. In other words, 6 out of 10 2020 KCSE candidates are complete academic failures, unsuitable for a direct university education. A handful of these ones may enroll in some short-term courses, lasting a few months to receive a piece of paper called “certificate”.
What do these numbers tell us? That the country’s public education system has been systematically destroyed. Politicians, starting with Kibaki with his populist and ill-thought out “free education program” do not care about the Kenyan child and their future. They consider these kids a dispensation and only fit to serve their children as gardeners, cooks, watchmen and drivers. A majority of our children find themselves in this rotten and tragic system. We are a nation of clowns, where the President and his Minister celebrate mass failures. A system that churns out a half a million folks every year who cannot join university education is a joke. Pathetic.
The political elite, including MCAs do not care about just how bad our education system is. Their kids attend private academies, while those of MPs, Senators, Cabinet Ministers and Governors, go to ultra-elite schools. It was not a surprise that President Kibaki, the economist, did not care pilling 100 kids in a classroom meant for 20 kids. There were no desks or basic learning material. Teachers were overwhelmed. And when President Uhuru came around, his government spoke of “laptops for every Kenyan learner”; the same pupils who had no desks, and whose teachers had no chalk. Sadly, we now know the laptops project was nothing but a multi-billion fraud racket where a few individuals stole from all of us and we moved on as a country.
It’s time that Kenyan leaders reexamined our education system and critically analyzed annual academic results and the story they tell. For far too long, we have always paid attention at the top of the pyramid of academic performance representing an insignificant portion of the candidates, and totally ignored the rest of the students and how their performance impacts our society.
We have become a nation of “you are on your own” mentality. Policy makers guided by Vision 2030, should have identified the needs of the Kenyan job market which would help graduating students enroll in technical courses to obtain skills needed to earn a living. But even if that was the case, have we given up? Have we accepted that its ok to have 60% of students get a D+ and 80% below C+? How do we compete with emerging markets where foreign investors are looking at an educated population with technical skills needed to support their investments?
These are questions we all need to ask and a debate we all need to have. The future our country is in the hands of graduates we produce and its imperative that we interrogate KCPE, KCSE and other standardized test results, define parameters of success as an academic system in totality and as opposed to individual achievements and address emerging issues with the urgency it deserves.
In fact, it is high time we demand for accountability for the CS of education and top leadership of the ministry as to how they can be considered fit to hold office after overseeing a learning and examination process that returns a 60% failure rate, year in year out! What is there to celebrate for such gloom results?
Very sad and scary how generations are sinking in to an abyss courtesy of an education system that operates pretty much like a sausage production line. Jacob and Musasia this is so very courageous of you to pen this down. I hope Kenyans with children in the system mark your words.