Fred Matiang'i and team need support to bring back sanity

The education system in Kenya has been crying for reforms. From nursery to university, our education is in a mess.

That is why what Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i is doing to improve standards requires support from all stakeholders.

A number of them have expressed disappointment in the sharp drop in overall performance. So much so that the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) has called for an audit of the 2016 exam.

Their bone of contention is that the marking process was flawed thereby putting the candidates at a disadvantage.

While calls for the recall of scripts are in order, Knut boss Wilson Sossion should propose reforms to enhance the quality of education.

{Benard Amaya, via mail}

Let us call a spade a spade. When one undertakes an examination, he obtains a certain mark. When a third party changes that mark, whether it is by raising or lowering it, how do you justify the newly crafted mark as the true ability of that person?

I understand that this changing of marks in the name of creating a normal distribution of exam results has been going on secretly for a long time.

This is criminal and those behind it should be prosecuted.

Not all events result in a normal distribution, and a skewed distribution of exam results is not statistically an aberration if the changing is as a result of the true marks obtained by the students.

We keep quoting results in the US, Europe and Asian countries as usually producing normally distributed results.

However, we must remember that generally those are highly accountable systems where teachers and students work hard and do not depend on cheating in exams.

In our case, the examination and teaching systems have become so lax that when subjected to a process devoid of cheating, many were bound to fall in the lower grades bracket, hence the skewed results.

The solution is not to keep on manipulating the exam results but for teachers and students to work hard, knowing that hard work will get them and their schools good grades.

Over time, the system will adjust itself to deliver the normal curve as students begin to get higher grades through hard work and teachers reduce their slackness and absenteeism.

This criminal normalisation of results is being pushed for the benefit of a section of Kenyans in the education sector.

If we give in to such elements, we will soon begin seeing 'normalisation' being applied in other sectors by the ever-innovative criminal elements of our country.

 

Pray for Dr Matiang'i and the new Knec board to win this battle, given that bodies such as Knut, Kuppet and politicians have joined the fray on the side of the badly-performing students.

 {Boniface Makau, Nairobi}

The recently released KCSE exam results seems to be a scandal in the making and people should look at it with a second pair of lens before applauding the minister and his new chief at Knec.

I submit that the results are not a genuine representation of the candidates' performance or their ability due to a number of observations.

Most significant, the timelines used to mark and release the exams were highly questionable considering that the 2016 volume of work was higher than the previous years.

It beats logic that an exam that has been taking two months to mark took roughly 25 days, subjecting markers to untold stress and humiliation under very tense conditions.