Last week saw news of momentous
proportions. It was a story that, if true, will change Kenya irrevocably, and
affect many generations of its people. It is news that has been anticipated, if
not downright welcomed, by experts, and they expect that it will begin to bring
things into equilibrium. The previous situation was so far off kilter that it
called into question the decision-making of its policymakers.
Oh, and last week, too, Kenya rebased her
economy. We’re now in lower middle-income territory, to congratulations on the
one hand and hoots of derision on the other.
The important news, though, is the calling
by some policymakers for the scrapping of ranking of national exam results. The
Kenya Certificate of Primary Education and Kenya Certificate of Secondary
Education are seminal events. Every year, millions of students sweat over the
exams, and perspire a lot more as the results announcements loom close. Not
only are they judged on entire swathes of their young lives, but they then get
their entire life trajectories changed by the results announced.
It is an equally big deal for the schools
involved. Tens of thousands of schools are classified as examination centres.
They play host to examination candidates, whose performance determines how
these schools are ranked nationally. This is not just a matter of pride,
despite how much friendly banter goes on among alumni of various institutions.
The rankings are almost looked at as a
moral reckoning for teachers, students and principals. If a school is in the
top national tables, the methods used to get there are rarely examined. And
these methods are increasingly skirting ethical lines; with school
administrators and proprietors doing anything to ensure they’re in the news
that night and in the papers the next morning.
The methods used are legion. Separating
students into performance classes and non-performance ones. Registering
students as candidates in other examination centres (so that their results are
not included when calculating the mean grades for the school). It has even gone
to the extreme of students getting expelled from school if their mean grade
prior to the national examination falls below a certain level. Little thought
is given to the emotional and psychological impact of, in effect, telling a
twelve-year-old or a sixteen-year-old that they are not good enough to sit for
exams with their peers. Schools have been turned into examination factories,
with little tolerance for deviation from the highest performance. It is an
immense perversion of the Six Sigma principle, except that, in this case, the
rejects are Kenya’s young people. We are not yet at the level of Asian
countries such as South Korea, with students under such pressure that their
only recourse is suicide. We are, however, getting there, and fast.
This is all about big money. The higher a
school ranks, and the more consistently it appears in those lists, the more it
is able to attract students and their parents, and the more it is able to
charge them. The pedagogical function of education is falling by the wayside,
and this will have an economic impact. The discussion on the virtues or lack
thereof of what is being taught, how it is being taught and whether this fits
into our national economic and social aims is not taking place. As a matter of
fact, I am not even sure (except for a brief discussion during the
constitutional talks) that we have ever bothered asking ourselves such
fundamental questions.
We are the losers. The complaint is an old
one – that we are churning out automatons who can only regurgitate examination
answers. But I believe the issue is a little more complex than that. Young
people are extraordinarily adaptable, and they do manage to round themselves
off, especially when they apply some effort. The problem is in the investment
in education as a whole. The same practices seen at primary and secondary level
are now being repeated in universities, where proprietors are more interested in
attracting high-fee-paying students (especially for ‘parallel’ courses) than in
excelling at improving the stock of knowledge in the country. Little
cutting-edge research – which leads to products and to viable businesses –
takes place, and the country is the loser.
Which is where the subject ties into the
larger national conversation about our ranking as an economy. In a radio
discussion on Nation FM I took part in a week ago, Jaindi Kisero lamented the
loss of manufacturing in our economy. Last week was a bad one for Kenya as an
industrial nation – both Eveready (the battery manufacturer) and Cadbury (the
confectioners) announced that Kenya would no longer host factories. Instead,
they would use the country as a distribution centre for their products. Each
had its specific reasoning, ranging from unfair competition to global strategic
changes.
However, there is a reason that companies
gravitate to certain countries when they are considering where to set up.
Technology companies go to California in the United States, and to Israel,
because they are assured that the top minds, which will churn out the next
generation of innovation, will be found there. Germany, despite its high labour
costs, will remain a hotbed of cutting-edge manufacturing and innovation,
because its schools, technical colleges and universities continue to produce
the best brains possible.
So let us welcome both sets of news. One
hopes that when we stop ranking our young people, our ranking as an economy
will go up.
Also published in the Business Daily on 7 October 2014 at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/Do-away-with-ritual-rankings-of-young-people/-/539548/2477210/-/vxb0ewz/-/index.html
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