A senator from Coast wants marked answer sheets returned to students who sit national exams.
Nominated Senator Miraj Abdillahi said the controversies surrounding national exams can be eliminated if answer sheets are returned to the examinees after marking.
“This will help us know the truth and point out where the students are weak,” she said.
Abdillahi, who spoke to the Star on the phone, said it is not possible that year in, year out, results of students from the Coast are poor.
She said there is need to critically examine the pattern of results in national examinations, especially from the region.
“It is time, as Coast leaders, we have this debate. I have heard student grumbling in low tones about their results after consistently performing well in school, only to fail in the final national exams,” Abdillahi said.
“When I was at Bondeni Girls Primary School, you can even go check with the school right now, I used to get between 380 and 410 marks. But when the KCPE results came, I had 330 marks.”
“It is not possible for a whole school like Shika Adabu, which has ‘A’ material students, who joined the school with 350 marks plus, to suddenly have the students become so daft over a four-year period that no student can manage higher than a B+. It is not possible,” the senator added.
Shika Adabu High School posted a mean grade of D+ in the 2023 KCSE exam.
It had 185 candidates, one scored B+, three B plain, three B- and nine C+. This means only 16 students qualified for university entry.
Fifty students got C-, 18 had C plain, 48 D+, 39 D plain and 14 had D-.
“It is time the Ministry of Education explains to us why they give us these kind of grades,” Abdillahi said.
She said it is surprising that Coast leaders accepted the results and kept quiet.
“We should ask the ministry questions. Are they giving us teachers who should not be teaching our children? It cannot be that all students in public schools are daft and those in private schools, like Sheikh Zayed, are bright,” Abdillahi said.
“They should tell us the secret of the teachers they post to private schools and those they post to public schools at the Coast."
The senator dismissed the excuses bandied on poor education performance at the Coast, saying other regions have more or less the same problems but still do well in national exams.
“The drug menace is not only at the Coast. And even so, does it mean there are no decent students who can perform well in public schools?” she posed.
Abdillahi said residents are known for their love of miraa, which has been blamed for lack of focus on education in teenagers, yet in counties where the stimulant is produced, children do well in exams.
“We grew up in houses where our parents chewed miraa, but we still did better in exams. That should not be an excuse. They should not justify the results they give us at the Coast using flimsy excuses,” she said.
“They also say Coast leads in disco matangas and that is why there is rampant early pregnancies. But statistics from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics show early pregnancies are on the decline at the Coast and on the rise in other regions.”
Abdillahi said parents in the region have also been accused of poor parenting, leading to poor performance in education.
She, however, said this cannot be the cause of poor results in national exams.
Abdillahi said there should be an overhaul of teachers in the region, if that would help the situation.
