We expect commitment, efficiency in public service

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i and his team caught us all flat-footed. They say that old habits die hard, but ours don’t just die hard. They are bad habits that seem to be only second to our nature because we are accustomed to repeated cycles of life, after the same pattern of bad things, year in year out. We gravitate towards the beasts that George Orwell had in mind when he wrote that “their life, so far as they knew, was as it had always been. They were generally hungry, they slept on straw, drank from the pool; they laboured in the fields; in winter they were troubled by the cold, and in summer by the flies.”

In essence, nothing changes and nothing good happens. When we seem to stumble into a good thing, it takes the air out of our lungs. That is what the management of national examinations this year – and now the announcement of the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE)  results – has done to us. We are flabbergasted. And rightly so. Jogoo House knocked us breathless this week. We are used to the results coming out during the last two days of December. They arrive fully loaded with all manner of anomalies and angry exchanges. There are accusations and counter accusations about exam stealing, cheating, doctoring and a whole cocktail of dysfunctional recriminations. The teachers’ unions are brandishing the fist from one corner and a self-styled parents’ association is making shrill sounds from some other corner. Private schools are complaining over one thing or the other, and some parents and schools are frantically drawing everyone’s attention to the plight of cancellation of their results. From there we move on to a messy selection of Form One candidates, equally amidst a complaints galore. We move on to a teacher’s strike – or a threat about an imminent one. Our life goes on that way, up to the end of the year, when teachers either go on strike or promise to do so as a preface to the next cycle of national examinations.