Education is much more than exam results : The Standard

• XN Iraki 24th Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT +0300

The release of KCPE results is a dicey moment for parents depending on the child’s performance. For some parents, it’s time to celebrate, for others it’s stress and distress. The media does a good job for the children who performed well. For the poor performers, not so much their fault, it’s time to be humble and wait for nature to literally take its course. Dreams turn into nightmares, the world ignores them - and in Kenya that could be for a lifetime. The results mark a turning point in children’s life. It’s one of the rare occasions when the whole country, whole family and community think about you. One wishes that would last forever. Results are not just about marks. Add the rite of passage that nowadays follows the exams and in a few months we boldly try to turn boys or girls into adults. We shall leave that and its controversies for now; should it be the work of churches or elders? The question would be easier to resolve if no money was involved.

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Educating children nowadays is vastly different from the past. Education was not privatised when we were growing up; there were no academies, the hustlers and affluent schooled together. One way to hit back at the affluent was to ‘beat’ them in the exams. Somewhere along the way, the hustler and the affluent went different ways. It is one of the greatest social changes in Kenya’s history and its effect will be felt for generations to come. Education, the holy grail to social advancement and equality, became the road to inequality. Yet such an event is never part of national conversation such as the BBI, multi-partism or constitutionalism. With same curriculum, students and their parents now have choices to either go through public or private schools (academies). The choice is based on affordability.

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Suddenly, socio-economic classes became noticeable in schools, much earlier in children’s life. Anyone who could afford left for academies. Their good performance attracted even more students to private schools. Even not-so-affluent parents wanted to be counted. The investors build different categories of academies with fees depending on the location. They put up boarding facilities to attract more students from across the country. Performance in exams became the selling point for academies. Noted their adverts in the dailies after exam results?

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The academies came between the public primary schools and the international schools, up there. They focused mostly on the middle class or pseudo-middle class. The hustlers and, some would argue, the sufferers were left with the public schooling system. With this parallel system, we seem to have legitimised inequality so early in our children’s lives. When results are released, we see the disparity in performance. The top students from academies go to top national schools and sprint far ahead of their public counterparts. Too much care, however slows them down. Quotas for public schools in admission to top public schools were resisted, and for a good reason; getting to the national schools is often a selling point for academies. It is paradoxical that we have very few good private secondary schools despite so many academies. This can be easily explained. The high school curriculum is broader and needs more resources. That serves as a barrier to entry for investors. The shortage of good private secondary schools has generated a lot of competition for the few top public national schools. Expanding national schools to 105 made the original 17 even more competitive.  I have noted that our original 17 national schools are more competitive than Harvard University.

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With so many children from academies taking many slots in national schools, some have argued, our top public secondary schools have been privatised through the back door. I fear we have accepted that some children must be left behind. Yet the performance of pupils in KCPE is not just about exams. Their background matters at times even more than their IQ. If your grandfather was a graduate, it’s different from if you are the first graduate in your family. Did you school in your village or away? How big is your family? What matters most, food or school? Do you use electricity or oil lamp to read? Who are your role models? Leaving some children behind and blaming the victim is not a hallmark of a civilised country. The proposed scholarship programme by the Ministry of Education is a step in the right direction. Do we have tax exemption for scholarship funders?  No child should miss school because the parents can’t afford. Statistically speaking, most children in Kenya come from poor backgrounds. By extension lots of good brains are among the poor. Neglecting such a resource would be akin to slowing down economic growth. The great economies today are about putting the brains of their citizens and even immigrants into use; more than natural resources such as oil.

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We have a workable solution to make education the holy grail of socio-economic advancement, not inequality. An unequal society or country is very expensive to run or govern. Noted the amount of money you spend on security from hiring guards to building walls and fences? Do you count the emotional cost? We must do all we can to ensure no child is left behind. Brains are our greatest national asset. Any child who drops out or is not allowed to reach his or her potential is a loss to the nation. Are we looking at that in CBC beyond the years one spends in primary, high school or university? Education is not a brain issue, it’s an economic issue. - The writer teaches at the University of Nairobi

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