Gitau Warigi
By GITAU WARIGI
Posted Saturday, December 31 2011 at 15:51
Posted Saturday, December 31 2011 at 15:51
IN SUMMARY
- Intelligence: In truth, examinations don’t really test how innately intelligent the child is – or will be
It has become an end-of-year tradition that an orgy of excitement accompanies KCPE examination results when they are announced.
The same thing happens when KCSE results are released. It is time for the winners to celebrate while the laggards despair. The excitement is not much different from what you see after announcement of the results of a General Election — minus the violence.
In truth, examinations don’t really test how how innately intelligent a child is–or will be. Instead, they are merely filters to determine who will climb the next rung of our highly competitive education ladder.
Those who oppose the current system say it is only good for rewarding diligence, recall and rote learning. But since we have not devised a more creative way to do the filtering other than through standard national examinations, the practice is bound to remain.
Once again, KCPE rankings give rise to loud complaints about “marginalised” areas and “well-endowed” ones.
There is definitely a problem somewhere when you look at the results from the Coast counties. Yet at the same time the county rankings this year play havoc with the rich-versus-poor storyline.
Certainly “marginalisation” cannot be used to explain why pupils in Mandera and West Pokot did so much better than those in Nakuru and Meru.
Cultural and lifestyle drawbacks can often be more significant than whether a school has teachers and desks. If you prefer your boy to herd goats while you laze about at market centres, he is bound to lag behind in class.
And if at the other end of the scale you allow your child excessive face time with PlayStations and other fancy gadgets, he won’t perform even when his school has computers and graduate trainers.
I hear the anguish in Kisii and Nyamira counties over what the residents are calling the KCPE calamity. Television stations have been running with the story of a school in Nyamira with the unfortunate name of Nyakemincha, which means “tail” in the Gusii language.
The fact that it trailed in the rankings has given wags plenty to talk about. Parents and well-wishers are muttering that it is time the name was changed.
Still, rankings should not demoralise the those in the Kisii counties. For one, mean scores hardly tell the whole story of how basic education is spread in a county.
Chances are that the bulk of children of school-going age in Kisii attend primary school. Even with so-called free primary education, the same cannot be said of those in many counties in the so-called ASALs (arid and semi-arid lands) who were ranked nominally higher.
Which brings me to the other anomaly rankings do not resolve. If you closely examine individual scores, you will notice the very top performers — those with a mean score above 400 points — remain heavily skewed outside “marginal” areas.
Nairobi as always has the bulk of the top 100 candidates.
If this trend is replicated when it comes to university intakes–as it surely will be–the country’s most important human resources will remain concentrated in the better-off counties.
In terms of mean score Mandera may have done very well, but the top 10 candidates from Nyamira still outscored everybody in the three counties of the former North Eastern province.
Apart from the joy and tears and the parade a trust of happy or dejected parents and teachers, every year brings a unique story to inspire us all.
This year I was most impressed by the performance and fortitude of the Class 8 girls from Loreto Convent Msongari in Nairobi who were in a horrific accident near Meru only months to their final exam.
Many sustained life-changing injuries, some had limbs amputated; yet with all the surgeries and missed classes, they still performed quite well.
You’ll still have to somehow get a job at the end of it all, but otherwise you have a leg up over the poorer performers who risk idling away their adult lives drinking Yokozuna.In a poor country where opportunities are scarce, a good education is the equivalent of receiving a trust fund in the West.
gwarigi@ke.nationmedia.com
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