Our education system needs reform

This past week has seen several proud parents breath a collective sigh of relief due to the release of the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam results.

There have also been a few disgruntled parties who were not happy with the abolished rankings.

Apparently, the Ministry of Education has denied some schools the bragging rights they were so accustomed to.

Yes, I acknowledge that that is a flippant and simple statement so I could do without the irate and indignant rejoinders from educators who are probably dying to put me in my place.

I sat my primary exams many years ago.

Years later, I still have an axe to grind with the 8-4-4 system that I went through, and chances are I will always harbour some bitterness.

Three years before I sat my exam, I had to transfer to a different school because we had changed residence.

I started my journey to school at five in the morning, and had a workload that had me getting less than five hours of sleep every night. I was operating on autopilot and probably got more sleep on the bus than in my bed.

The toll that those late nights and early mornings were taking on me meant nothing to the school I was being transferred from.

Impervious to my troubles, the school administration refused to grant me a transfer letter.

Apparently it had something to do with them suspecting that my move to the other school had been engineered to shore up the rankings of the other entity.

Never before had I felt like I was nothing more than a number on a report card.

But then again, this particular school was known for its unbending and less than ethical drive to make pupils score high grades.

Sometimes we had special appointments with 'the spanking slabs', especially when our performance fell below expectations.

I lost count of all the reasons for which we got caned, but my nine year old brain had learnt to colour inside the lines.

Learning that kind of aversion to risk in your formative years takes a toll and is ridiculously hard to get away from later in life.

Fast forward to two decades later.

Thankfully, corporal punishment in schools has been abolished but not much else seems to have changed.

Those of my friends who have school-going children are still caught up in the senseless competitiveness that ailed our childhood.

Any time I ask whether it is really necessary to get an eight year old three additional hours of tuition a day, the answer is that all the other kids are doing it and no one wants their child to lag behind.

This kind of competition is unhealthy on many levels. It reduces children to the marks they score.

I have seen it produce students who are extremely book smart but not street savvy.

Lest I sound like I’m banishing the baby with the bath water, I do acknowledge that the system also has its merits.

The consensus is that it brings out academic strengths in a way that the rival systems don't.

I find though, that the focus is more on quantity than quality, with students being judged solely on their academic strengths than other attributes.

It takes a long time to unlearn conditioned behaviour, and especially the realisation that embracing risk avoidance as a way of life does more harm than good.

And that is the 8-4-4 chip that I'll always carry on my shoulder.

There have been various efforts to review Kenya's education system, but so far it doesn't look like they are having any meaningful success on the content and delivery fronts.

The advent of free primary education further compounded the problem by stretching an already strained workforce.

The current issues being faced with the looming teachers strike and standoff over pay packages goes deeper than pay.

While free education was a noble and essential undertaking, the fees were meant to be subsidised by the Government. But there have been reports that these funds are rarely released on time or in full.

Compounding the difficulty of service delivery is poor infrastructure and a human resources shortage due to a hiring freeze.

As children continue to suffer sporadic and substandard service delivery, my heart goes out to teachers.

These are not conditions that would set anyone up for success.