Exam cheating mirror the rot in our society

National examinations leakage has become a perennial disease in our country. Teachers, students and police officers have been implicated in an evil examination leakage racket. Last year, an impostor posing as the then Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) chief, Paul Wasanga, was nabbed extorting money from principals to leak examination papers.

Cheating allegations, if confirmed, have the potential to deal a devastating blow to the quality of our education.

Performance in the national examination may singularly spell doom or open great doors into the future of many students. So pervasive is the desire to pass national examinations at all costs that the need for genuine commitment to serious academic work is slowly being overridden. School principals and teachers too are gauged on the kind of grades they post at the beginning of every year.

The mere thought that some evil people somewhere are intent on ruining the future of a whole generation should send chills down our national spine. In actual sense, it means that the playing field is not level for all candidates. Yet, the same measure will be used to apportion university and college places? Conventional wisdom would demand getting to the root of the evil, and uprooting it instead of mere symptomatic treatment.

First, the cut-throat nature of our examinations, and the premium placed on them, is driving many schools into rote learning. Some legislators have proposed that KCPE (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education) and KCSE (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education) be scrapped. But we can look at best practices elsewhere and come up with what works best under our circumstances. Instead of a single examination done at the end of a lengthy period of study, we could for instance use a matriculation system that employs a series of examinations with various drop-off levels depending on the career the student wants to pursue.

Secondly, we should look at examination leakage as a symptom of a bigger societal ill. Might this be a manifestation of moral decadence, the trashing of ethics with abandon, and our inherent penchant for cutting corners? I shudder to think of how a student who possibly benefited from cheating can parade before journalists when results are released and declare that, “It was a result of hard work, support from parents and belief in God.” Further, the student will enter university on this false premise, pursue a competitive career and secure a coveted position. This is like building a house on sand. When the waves come, it will surely tumble and disintegrate, to the detriment of the student, and the unsuspecting nation.

Thirdly, the pride we have placed in academic performance has driven stakeholders to look for all means possible to ramp up performance. The other day, we saw a parent whose son came almost tops in last year’s KCPE lament that she would have liked to see her son featured on TV, having trounced all others.

The Ministry of Education has taken some steps as a remedy to this hangover of performance. Ranking was abolished last year. But more still needs to be done. We need a system that guarantees holistic development of a child, not only in academics, but in social, emotional and spiritual growth. Discovery and growth of talent must be taken into consideration.

Lastly, the end products of our schooling system must be authentic and ready for the national and international markets. This will only happen if we seal the loopholes in examination malpractices.

Dr Paul Bundi Karau is a medical doctor, author and motivational speaker. He’s currently a resident in Internal Medicine at the University of Nairobi.