What are you watching? If you are a herbivore, living in a game park, eating grass, then every second you are processing – did that lion just move? Are they three or four? Is the small one a threat? The watching is not passive. It is a life skill.
Each animal is watching for a change in pattern. Because a failure to recognise a change in the pattern could equal death. Move up the food chain and lions are found lying down with what appears to be a lazy look until you look at their eyes, watching intently. Watch a wildlife documentary.
It is reported that in 2019, more than one-third of 660,204 candidates who sat the previous year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exam failed to attain grades above C- that would have allowed them to pursue professional courses.
Dig a bit deeper among those with low grades, 29,318 candidates had an E, with almost all of them registered in subcounty schools. National schools recorded just 338 candidates with an E. Remember that small number out of the thousands of struggling lives. Getting an E in KCSE is the end of the academic road in Kenya.
What is more astonishing is that the 2019 results were an improvement on the previous two years. In 2017 there was a national uproar at the dismal results. This followed a change in the way the exam was done and marked. Then Education CS Amina Mohamed blamed the "inability of candidates to respond to questions requiring application and analytical skills".
Another reason given was that mass failure was the result of efforts to reduce cheating in exams, with then Education CS Fred Matiang'i saying "we have lived a lie for such a long time". There is some truth in that statement, but it is assuming that there is only one lie. It may be that we have a group of students who lack the capacity to answer any questions that require application or analytical skills, in simpler language, the capacity to think.
The Central Bank of Kenya says seven million of 19 million accounts listed with CRB have defaulted on their loans. That is just over one-third of all the accounts. In the recent election, the turnout was about 65 per cent. About one-third did not vote. It is believed those who did not vote were youth, that is those over 18 and under the age of 35.
The IEBC is allowed to ignore those who did not vote and so the denominator to determine the winner and loser is only those who voted. This has been litigated at the Supreme Court, which ruled that if you are part of the one-third who did not vote, tough. You do not count.
This summarises how the people who should care, choose not to. Some sectors of our government ignore what is difficult to do. But there are some sectors that do not have a choice to pick a convenient denominator. Doctors and clergy cannot.
Where do you find doctors and clergy? At the beginning and end of life. Once you are born and before you die, there are all kinds of exams that are set for people to do, so that they can be categorised into groups.
In a KCSE candidate gets at least a D+, they can later apply to be a police officer, and if they are lucky one day get a road to themselves. If not, they can still be security for some politician or political adviser on what the ground is like. If they score higher and get admission to university, especially private university, about 37 per cent of them still drop out. Some who have a better off relative set up as a boda boda.
The problem and the debate with our education system is whether this is productive. But we should take one step back and ask first, ‘is it sustainable’? Is it fair, at every step, to knock off one-third of the population first as useless? Part of the solution is that the root cause is not the education system but the health and agricultural systems
Poor nutrition, especially for under-fives, before they enter the education system, leads to irreversible stunting and reduction of cognitive ability. About one-third of children in Kenya are stunted with diminished cognitive ability.
I must use big words, to be as polite as possible.
The students received by the education system at the point of entry are already difficult to teach to the set standard. The lack of investment in education makes the problem worse, even for those who could have achieved.
At the point of exams there is not much of a role for doctors, but it is common practice for schools to have prayer days. Ever wondered why? The patterns are there to be observed.
Wishing all the candidates best of luck.
