YVONNES TAKE: Lets make our exams less bureaucratic with fewer politicians, guns

I want to take you back to the day you were doing your national exams. Remember the tension? The anxiety? The feeling of fear that that one exam would determine the rest of your life? Remember how you were not allowed to be ill on that day or God forbid anything else that could affect your performance? And knowing that this would mean your dreams were on the line with just that one exam? Good, now I want you to remember the decision we made as a country that we needed to do away with this pressure. So much so, that we stopped things like ranking of schools. We even moved towards 100 per cent transition and said that all our children need to move to the next level without that “all important” grade that branded one either a failure or a success.

We then went a step further in CBC and said that the exams will not be a determinant of our future and that they would only be a means to gauge the level of understanding of the learners. Folks, we may have agreed to all this and even put it down on paper, but we are yet to actually live the spirit of it. We are still stuck in the past. In this just concluded exam week, we have all the senior most members of the Executive opening the exam containers, handing out papers to students while still giving them the age-old pep talks about how their lives have all come to this one great moment and they are on the cusp of the next important phase of their lives. All this yet we agreed that these exams were no biggie and would not determine their future. All this yet we agreed to remove the pressure from this one moment as a mark of failure or success.

As if that is not enough, we have a very visible presence of security officials with rifles and other weapons. As if they are expecting to foil a robbery with violence attempt. In any case, exam leaks don’t happen on the day of the exam, it happens days before. And as my colleague Francis Gachuri so eloquently laid out in his Punchline last week, the cheats are not necessarily the students, but rather those who can spend thousands of shillings to buy leaked papers. So, what does this show of force serve, other than to scare young learners and add to the pressure they already feel? Is there no other way of ensuring integrity?

I am not saying that we should not have police officers at the school, but do they have to have a looming presence and hover over the children? And as for the government officials, do all Cabinet Secretaries have to open the exam containers and hand them to the students, who might now feel the enormity of the exercise because they are seeing very senior government officials whom they only read or hear about in the press?

Folks, if we have decided, and we have, that these national exams are not the end all be all. If we have decided, and we have, that one major exam will not be the only determinant of a learner’s future. And if we have decided, and I’m pretty sure we have, that we will have 100 per cent transition and therefore one exam doesn’t determine whether they move to the next level or not, then, let us do away with the officialdom around these national exams. It is a ritual that needs to end.

The education sector officials like those in KNEC, TSC and others are perfectly capable of administering these exams. Let the learners do their exams in peace, let us gauge their level of understanding of the curriculum and if we find that there is more work to be done, make the necessary changes for them as they go forward, and the necessary changes for those who will come after them. If the exams are not a big deal, don’t make them a big deal.