WHY NATIONAL EXAMS HAVE ALWAYS LEAKED

“Exams have always leaked its only that this time  village schools had an opportunity to enjoy what ‘big’ schools have always enjoyed in the past.”

For the first time national secondary school exam leakage has caught the attention of mainstream media to the extent of being the most discussed topic overtaking the slump of the Kenyan shilling against the dollar. Most parents often prefer that their children join the so called ‘best’ performing high schools since they are not only guaranteed of scoring highly in their final exams but also getting the privilege of taking the most competitive available courses such as medicine, dentistry, law and engineering which they later either drop out or transfer to other more accommodative courses. Some at times brave on to graduate that’s why we have ‘Doctors’ like Mugo wa Wairimu.

In a country where the end does not justify the means, as long as you get an A no one cares how you got it as long as you got it. Pressure from parents on principals, teachers and students have pushed these parties to engage in exam malpractices in one way or another. In a society where the passing exam is a symbol of how bright ones future is, no one would hesitate not to cheat if that is the only way his or her survival is guaranteed in a system where corruption which comes in different forms such as this has been institutionalized.

The exam leakage fiasco is not an architect of one man but a master plan of various stakeholders in an unending chain involving all stakeholders who have access to the exam before it is administered and after it is administered through the so called standardization process. What do you expect when a teacher who is an examiner of lets say Agriculture, takes part in setting the exam at the same time has teaching roles back at school, will he be able to deny his students the questions he or she and the team had set? Obviously no, It is human not to. Schools which have the highest number of examiners have always performed better as opposed to those schools where even the principal does not receive an invitation to set even a Christian Religious Education question. When big schools want to justify the amount of fees levied on students plus their status in national ranking getting a higher mean score will be a justification of both.

How a school gets more than 100 A plains has always remained a mystery to me since I know bright classmates of mine who never got As yet they were more than deserving the likes of Dalmas Samlad Ndicho,Brian Wanga,Wandera  Yonah,Alvin Ambunya,Bernard Wanyama the list is long. If these people never got As nobody can convince me a school can amass 100 As ,if they are not beneficiaries of the leakage process. Some schools which were academic giants in the past are fading year after year because their principals and teachers have maintained the old age philosophy of “learn to depend on your brain”,St Marys Yala is a good example.

Moi Girls Eldoret Students sitting for English paper 3. 

Photo courtesy of Google

Yesterday as I was commuting from work, two parents seated in front of me engaged in a debate that caught the attention of nearly half the passengers on board prompting the conductor to switch off the bus music system as various passengers gave their opinions concerning the topic. Both parents had candidates in the ongoing exam. One parent the antagonist claimed the leakage will lock out more deserving students, his included from joining the university since ‘lazy bones’ and ‘dander heads’ who spent most of their time out of class are likely to pass with flying colours and even appear on television to give us lip service on how they never slept yet they know very well at the back of their minds the number of times they went for morning preps to read are countable, They enjoy massive, unlimited media coverage courtesy of exam leakage. The other parent the protagonist in this case said in parables “how one gets to town does not matter as long as he gets to town.” To him as long as a student finds his way to an institution of higher learning, how he got there is none of anyone’s business.

The massive leakages for once have leveled the playing ground between big schools and village schools thus giving the national examinations body a headache of a lifetime.How will the standardization be done now that markers are just going to confirm marking schemes? For the first time ranking might be done according to the alphabetical order the likes of Abednego and Bethsheba will get As, while the likes of Zuzarte and Zedekia will get Ds.