By Wachira Kigotho
The narrow view taken by the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) in reporting performance and achievement in public examinations has caused confusion as schools and sections of the media tried to provide information the institution withheld.
Critics of the policy adopted by the Education ministry to abolish schools’ ranking say the exercise was central towards ensuring educational accountability and monitoring of standards.
Now, there are no other credible criteria to measure students’ knowledge and mastery of material studied over the years. Ranking consisted of students’ average scores obtained in KCSE.
But as teachers from low performing schools hailed scrapping of the pecking order, top schools calculated mean scores of their performance in the last year’s KCSE and distributed them to the press.
The move angered examinations boss Paul Wasanga, who faulted performance indicators of 27 schools highlighted in the press. "Knec is very concerned because this ranking is wrong and misleading the public," said Wasanga in the council’s website. Without providing specific details, he observed some of the schools that were placed among the 10 top schools were below the top 50 in his records.
No matter who is right on the issue such controversy will always arise in absence of the examinations body giving out more details on performance. Wasanga and his counterparts in Jogoo House are well aware that KCSE is a high stakes examination and of great interest not just to education managers but to the public.
Clear Goals
According to Thomas Kellaghan of St Patrick’s College in Dublin, KCSE provides clear goals and standards to be achieved by the teachers and students.
But even more important, performance in the examination dictates selection criteria for future careers and further education. "KCSE and other public examinations are perceived to allocate scarce educational benefits in an objective and unbiased way," says Kellaghan, a keen watcher of Kenya’s education assessment system.
Subsequently, ranking of secondary schools is not about to die, simply because the Education ministry would like to recognise efforts of individual students only. As it emerged last week, the public will be very keen to know the school that produced the highest number of the top students.
All forms of unofficial ranking, often riddled with significant errors will be given to the public and with the evaluation body unwilling to give the correct statistics; some parents and their children will make poor choices not backed by facts. According to Daniel Koretz, a professor of educational measurement at Harvard University and a leading expert on educational testing, parents have a right to know the performance of schools.
Amid efforts to push for educational accountability, a parent has a right to know the effectiveness of a school attended by his or her children based on achievement scores.
Inefficient system
By abolishing ranking, it seems the Education ministry ostensibly, succumbed to pressure from its own inefficient secondary education system. Even as Wasanga cried foul over the invalid ranking, most of the schools that appeared on the list had for decades consistently been among the top 50 schools.
Besides the disputed performance indices, these schools produced most of the best students in their respective provinces. Although, last year’s results indicated performance fell in 15 subjects, academic achievement in those schools was almost similar to the previous years’ performances.
No matter how the ministry would like to explain the performance in KCSE, the fact is students from public national, provincial and high-cost secondary schools will continue to perform well. Unless reforms are carried out in the education sector to provide more competencies beyond entering further education, parents and their children are entitled to information on performance of schools to help them to make choices.