The events of this month show we have dived beneath the integrity threshold. But we are still digging, down the abyss. Formidable force has been deployed to police integrity of national examinations.
Security agencies, the presidency, down to sub-chiefs in Kadem, Kakuma, Kamagut and Kamukuya have been deployed to ensure teachers, parents and children do not cheat in exams.
Cheating in exams has attained a security risk status like terrorism. It is an emergency response to a national moral crisis. The mobilisation is probably an attempt to reclaim the integrity of the examination system. But it raises questions.
Why cheat in exams? Some want to lie because they were not taught how to pass exams. Some lie because they want to compete with top performing schools. The tendency has created a market for leaked exams.
Test papers are kept in fortified containers. Armed police escort the papers to exam centres. This is how Wells Fargo transports money to ward off thieves.
Kenya watchers are also asking, why these exams come at the end of a stage in the school system. Why not have continuous assessment tests for these children to avoid high security situations during the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education or Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams?
Driving the education system into a security crisis confirms there is something wrong with a curriculum that drills children on how to pass exams. But cynics are also asking, where do the children go after they pass these exams with superlative grades?
Forget the traditional 'A' that earned a candidate good standing for national schools. The grade also earned candidates places in high premium facilities for higher education.
Also, forget the 'B+' that qualifies candidates for second cadre top schools. Or entry into competitive courses in public universities. Not any more because the fall of 'A' has meant the rise of 'C' in a system that uses the alphabet to build or destroy its youth.
The ground shifted after the massification of education, and the devaluation of hard work. Now, a 'D', on average, once a failing grade, wins holders places in public secondary schools. All the children must join secondary schools - willy-nilly.
Formal education is a mass market that admits all, irrespective of potential. It's a sack that carries all sizes and types of potatoes to Marikiti.
We have created additional streams in the once premier schools that used to admit crème de la crème. The once preferred boarding schools now admit day scholars.
The numbers have spiralled beyond the capacity of those schools. Teachers are struggling with classes of 70 where they once had 40 students. These teachers cannot be expected to deliver quality, interactive education.
Education has been weaponised – a tool for populist politics. Private schools gained traction from the failure of the public education system. This is also how private hospitals gained when public health collapsed. Public universities are struggling, with high admissions, even of 'C' students.
And what happened to the high -value schools of the 1980s? Children are seeking answers. How do you answer when a child tells you: "The Maseno School, Alliance Boys High School, Alliance Girls High School, Lenana, Limuru, Mangu, Nairobi School, and others in their league, were great in your time, but the ground has shifted."
Children are restless in congested public schools. Numbers have risen without proportional expansion of facilities. The shortage of teachers, the one-size-fits all fees policy, dilapidated accommodation, empty libraries, smoky dining halls and kitchens, if any, add to the crises.
Standards of education have plummeted in proportion to the general collapse of integrity at the leadership front. Exams are stolen the way public funds are plundered.
This government, a hugely funded institution by all of us, should not be scared of the elephant in the boardroom of the nation's education. The public education system is crying for transformation.
Forgot government considering funding better performing private schools. The children in those schools are Kenyans, but the institutions are private businesses. Funding private universities is diversionary. The elephant to tame is the crisis in the public education system.