Cheating in exams does not affect or demonstrate the quality of graduates. The performance of students in an exam is not the yardstick for assessing the strengths or weaknesses of the teaching curriculum.
Cheating is an indicator of weakness in education policy that makes us rely heavily on exams.
Cheating will continue because there are high stakes in an exam, which is why people try all tricks to emerge successful. As a country, we have also over-relied on exams to determine everything about a student. That is why during the tests, we involve a multi-agency team.
Nobody is involved when students are participating in sports, when teachers are teaching and are affected by elements like bandits in North Rift or terrorists in Northeastern.
But when it comes to exams, it is do-or-die and they become heavily policed. High stakes are what push – even students with the capacity to pass well – to cheat.
The second problem is that we have been struggling to put a lot of emphasis on exams, just a two-and-a-half-hour event to determine the destiny of students, but we ignore what they have been doing or learning for the whole year.
We need a conversation on these issues because they have to be addressed. So central is the national exam that it defines your future, the college you will go to as well as the failure rate in the curriculum.
However, in terms of quality, the performance of our students does not indicate their quality.
The report about the 2022 national examination being stolen does not convey, in one way or another, the quality of the graduates because when they go to university, we expect those who have cheated to fail, but mostly, they don’t fail.
They do well. In fact, Kenyan university graduates remain very competitive in the job market globally. So, it is not the exam that determines the quality of education but it is only determining the quality of selections that we make.
Kuppet secretary general spoke to the Star
