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From noticeboard to sms: The evolution of results transmission

Education Minister Prof. Jonathan Ng'eno receives a copy of the 1985 Kenya Advanced Certificate of Education (KACE) results from KNEC secretary Ahmed Yussufu at Jogoo House, Nairobi, Feb 1986. [File, Standard]

A great deal has changed since the first KCPE results were announced in 1985. For the first time that year, there were no Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) results, which came with a top score of 36 marks.

Instead, under the new system, the best score one could get was 72 and the lowest was eight. Woe unto anyone who scored an eight. It meant that they got an E in all the nine subjects, including GHC, Arts and Craft and a plethora of others that have since been removed from the examination menu. When it was introduced, the 8-4-4 system replaced the 7-4-2-3 system, which had an element of High School and was more academic in nature.

In contrast, 8-4-4 was more practical. We were taught how to clean hurricane lamps, build grass-hatched huts, make stools, fashion music instruments, sew pyjamas, knit sweaters, draw... This was in addition to class work. No wonder classes routinely started before the official reporting time and continued well into school holidays, especially when learners got to Standard Seven and Eight.

For much of their history, KCPE results were released a day or two after Christmas. In our year, they were released on Boxing Day. And there were no SMS codes to get the results. One had to go to one’s school or nearest district education office to get them. Too often, the results were posted on the school notice board for all too see. By the time one got there, eye witness accounts would have told them if they had passed or failed.

It was expected that those who missed Form One places would “go to Jua Kali” to become artisans and artisans’ apprentices, having learned a plethora of practical courses. The rest would be distributed to national, provincial and district schools depending on how they had performed, with Harambee and Private schools being reserved for those who were not weak enough academically to “go to Jua Kali” and not clever enough to secure slots in public secondary schools.

Once KCPE results were released, the candidates had about six weeks to prepare to join Form One. Not only was this an academic transition but, in many communities, it also marked the transition from childhood to youth. In urban areas, boys were taken to hospitals to become men. In rural areas, where culture and tradition still held sway, they were taken into seclusion, sometimes in the forest, for any period between two weeks and two months. There were similar rites of passage for girls.

Many of those who fell off the education wagon became husbands and wives within a year of receiving their results, becoming farmers, fundis or small-scale traders and begetting many children as their age-mates slogged through the education system for another eight years.

That KCPE results are now being released before Easter represents a major and dramatic shift. In days gone by, this would have been the time to go looking for Safari Rally action in the rainy and muddy bundus. Today, many candidates are glued to their phones, play stations, television sets and other electronic gadgets that have replaced herding, tilling, planting, fetching water from the river and looking for firewood in the forest that were routine at around this time of the year.

That is not all. We will be back in November or December, to go through this ritual again after this year’s candidates sit their exams. This is the first time since the introduction of 8-4-4 that we will have two KCPE exams in the same year. Casting an eye ahead, it raises an important question: Will the next batch of candidates find Form One places next January? And how will they relate with their counterparts from the Competence-Based Curriculum who are also slated to sit their version of national exams later in the year and join what we are told will be called Junior High?