It is said, “what you don’t know won’t hurt you.” That is not the case for many private school pupils who sat the 2020 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exam. The Kenya Private Schools Association has more questions than answers regarding their performance in the just-released results.
That the results were released nearly a week after marking, a departure from the trend of releasing results immediately after marking is completed as established by former Education CS Fred Matiangi in 2016, deserves some answers.
That the projected results for some private schools drastically differ from the those announced by Kenya National Examination Council points to the age-old practice of moderation of exam results.
Moderation or standardisation is not bad, but it should not be used to disadvantage or advantage some learners. This procedure that is practised and accepted the world over is a closely guarded secret.
That public schools performed better than private schools in the 2020 KCPE exam has left many wondering how this happened. That out of the best 15 candidates, only five were from private schools was not just an overachievement on the part of public schools but a miracle of sorts. A miracle that can only be unravelled through the standardisation process.
No wonder parents and guardians with children in private schools have taken to social media to vent.
A few years ago, Uwezo Kenya conducted an assessment of the basic literacy and numeracy skills of children aged six to 16, the category that the KCPE exam is administered to. The key findings showed that literacy levels were lower in public schools than in private schools.
Public schools have numerous challenges including poor infrastructure, poor syllabus coverage, poor teacher-pupil ratio, among others, that have over the years led to private schools soaring in popularity due to their posting of better results.
When Covid struck in March 2020, many public school pupils were left to their own devices until October when the government initiated a phased reopening of schools. All this while, many private schools continued with online learning which not only helped pupils to amply cover the syllabus but do lots of revisions.
To then disadvantage them in the final results by moderating their marks as seems to be the case is not just unfair but opening a Pandora’s box. Today we are disadvantaging learners because they had more time to read and prepare for the exam, tomorrow we will be favouring some school because it belongs to so and so and we will be back to where marks were awarded to the highest bidder.
That the results were skewed in favour of public schools is not good for Kenya as it goes against the Public Private Partnership Act of 2013.
Exams should be an equaliser and the government should find better ways to standardise the results. The Basic Education Act of 2013 commits the government to ensure quality basic education conforming to the set standards and norms, including examinations and grading.
It is worth noting that data from national examinations is significant in providing policymakers, as well as educators, with useful evidence of trends in standards of learner achievement. The 2020 KCPE results will present lots of challenges in drawing conclusions and lessons if one of the outcomes is that children who stayed home the better part of the year performed better than those who were online learning through the pandemic. What analyses and recommendations will be made to teachers and student in relation to the 2020 KCPE?
With the ongoing rollout of the Competency Based Curriculum, we can only wish for a time when assessment shall encompass all the aspects instead of focusing on one-off academic performance. In this age and time, a proper grading system should capture and reward everything that the school teaches and nurtures.
Schools and students should be graded on the basis of continuous assessment tests, extracurricular activities, entry marks and value added by the individual candidate. This will ensure that grading does not glorify one-time academic achievements as is the case today of KCPE and KCSE at the expense of talent and other virtues.
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