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The media reported last week that Cabinet Secretary for Education Jacob Kaimenyi had banned the administration of mock examinations to students in high schools.
The truth of the matter is that Prof Kaimenyi called for enforcement of the ban on administration of mock examinations in secondary schools.
The Ministry of Education had banned mock examinations in September 2001 following the recommendations in the report of the Taskforce on Student Discipline and Unrest in Secondary Schools.
The taskforce was commissioned by then Minister for Education Henry Kosgey and chaired by Mrs Naomy Wangai.
It is the same taskforce that not only banned mock examinations, but it also banned tuition during holidays, weekends and beyond school hours.
The ban was not lifted. All that Kaimenyi did, in the light of recent unrests in schools, was to reinforce the ban.
The Ministry of Education is committed to ensuring that all children get a rich, meaningful public education that prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and challenges of adulthood.
Although due for reform, the current curriculum is capable of imparting knowledge, skills and attitudes to enable students to be useful members of the society. But this depends on the quality of teaching and learning that takes place in our classrooms and the school community in general.
But frequent examinations and mock examinations that starts from zonal, sub-district, county and diocesan levels – in the case of Catholic sponsored schools – compromise the quality of teaching and learning in schools.
The task force did not confine itself to administration of mocks examinations to candidates preparing for the Kenya Secondary Certificate of Education) examinations. It also made a sweeping observation to the effect that the number of tests done in the entire school system as part of continuous assessment were too excessive and cause stress to the entire student body and unnecessary expenditure which is passed to parents.
The Wangai Report, accordingly, recommended that there be a professional balance in testing, learning and testing in schools with the aim of curtailing unprofessional testing and examining of students.
School examinations should ideally aim at monitoring and evaluating the quality of teaching and learning that is taking place. Ideally, it should be diagnostic and not punitive. It should not be used to label students. It, should however, be used to identify the strength and weakness in teaching and learning in a formal education environment.
Too much testing of students takes away the time meant for effective teaching and learning.
In a forward to a report entitled Testing More, Teaching Less: What America’s Obsession with Student Testing Costs in Money and Lost Instructional Time, July 2013, by Howard Nelson, President, American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten poignantly notes: “it is …clear that the current testing environment is inhospitable to the knowledge, skills, and abilities we aspire to develop in students.”
We would be doing the children of this country proud if all stakeholders in education adhered to the renewed ban on mock examinations and holiday tuition both of which have created an inhospitable teaching and learning environment for the conscientious teacher as well as for the average students who needs a learning environment with less pressure.
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