Four days after the release of the shocker Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) 2016 exam results, focus now turns to tomorrow’s re-opening of schools, with a raft of radical changes awaiting the sector.
It was the first time in 27 years that the examination results were announced the same year they were done. Furthermore, the security and surveillance associated with the exams and spearheaded by reformist Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i had never been witnessed before.
The same case was seen with the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exams, which was also released early - on December 1, 2016, within a notice of 45 minutes.
After overseeing one of the most successful examination processes, Dr Matiang'i faces his next battle: ensuring that school fee guidelines are adhered to.
As usual when schools re-open, parents and guardians are faced with the menace of increased fees against their empty pockets yet to be replenished following the expensive Christmas holidays.
Being aware of such trends, Matiang'i has already put school heads on notice.
"Head teachers are urged to strictly adhere to the fees structures issued to ensure that all Kenyans irrespective of their backgrounds have unrestricted access to education," said Matiang'i.
The CS promised to make random rounds with ministry officials starting January 4 to ensure that no additional fees were imposed on parents and the fees guideline was adhered to.
"Any institution found flouting the guidelines will be firmly dealt with. I wish to put Board of Management (BoM) of schools that charge extra fees on notice that once we confirm any such illegalities, appropriate disciplinary action shall be meted out," said the CS.
BIG PLAN
And as part of the Jubilee government's big plan to increase access to education to all Kenyans, the CS said starting this year, the Government would extend payment of exam fees to all candidates sitting exams in private schools in Kenya.
"I, however, wish to warn schools against registering "ghost" candidates with the intention of inflating their candidature to the levels that Knec requires of an examination centre," said Matiang'i.
But this term is promising to be more momentous as new reforms are to be unveiled, which if adopted will see the scrapping of the 8-4-4 system of education that has been in place since 1985.
This is expected to see an increased number of students sitting for national exams and weed out cases where school principals or directors of private schools vanish with the money.
There was a total of 577,254 candidates who sat for the KCSE exams and over 942,000 sitting for KCPE in 2016.
Changes to the education system will focus on a more skills-oriented curriculum to move away from the heavy focus on examinations.
In 2016, the ministry, following President Uhuru Kenyatta's directive, embarked on the task of implementing reforms aimed at streamlining the management of national examinations.
The most fundamental objective of these measures was to restore the credibility of academic certificates at all levels of the education system whose ripple effect is already being witnessed.
DRASTIC MEASURES
The new curriculum is expected to be made public for scrutiny early this year and proposes drastic measures such as abolishing individualised national examinations and instead proposing continuous testing.
Matiang'i said the ministry supported continuous assessments over summative evaluation.
"This will require reforming of our current teacher training framework, a retraining of some of the critical actors in the evaluation chain and a re-examination of the whole process of the spectrum of assessment," said Matiang'i.
"We will present the proposed new curriculum to education stakeholders at a national curriculum conference early in 2017. We have to take the results of each examination administered seriously and seek to analyse the lessons we draw from them."
The CS explained that the reforms would boost the Government's concerted efforts to deliver an examination process that was beyond reproach; one that would enable our graduates to walk briskly in the global arena.
