The results for 2021 KCPE are out, and many of our parents, teachers, and learners are either excited or anxious. There will be excitement about children who scored the coveted mark of “over 350/500” in this examination and many stakeholders will likely rush in to support these high achievers. For others, anxiety stems from whether a learner passed or failed, and what that means for their future.
For some, they worked diligently and yet failed to receive the coveted mark, simply because of their difficult background or day-to-day circumstances. Their lower marks may not earn them scholarship or advancement to the next educational level. For parents, their anxiety comes: do we have enough savings to take our children to high school?
Of course, for other learners and parents, failing or passing this examination is not a significant concern. Their lives are in place, and they have all they need for the next steps. Furthermore, a lucky few learners will benefit from a good and kind stranger who might support them.
The difficult reality is, however, that most students who received lower marks on the examination will be seeing the end of their formal academic pursuits. This can be a source of great concern.
Let’s talk about the families in rural or urban homes who are poor and have no means. The results of this exam may mean a breakthrough to break a cycle if their child has the best grade, but it can also mean a repeated cycle if their child has failed.
Should we blame the child for not getting the coveted mark? Should we blame the teachers for not designing a classroom system where everyone gets over 350 marks regardless of their individual challenges and background? Should we blame the parents for having children they couldn’t educate or support? Should we blame the government for creating a brutal marking system that sets apart the grains from the chuff in a very technical manner? Should we blame society? Whose work is it to solve this problem?
The exam was marked by teachers, and the marking scheme did not take into account the child’s personality, background, or home and school environment. No, they don’t mark it by checking the child’s background and what circumstances they were in while taking the exams. They aspired to objectivity—whether the child answered the questions correctly and followed the instructions. Whether the child taking this exam was hungry, sick, or had been abused the night before was not for the markers/assessors of the exams to know. (And even if they do know, that information is not meant to influence the grading.)
What’s maybe good about this year’s and last year’s grading is that there has been a standardization which according to the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) it entails converting the raw marks of each paper in the KCPE examination so that the mean and standard deviations of each of the papers are identical. For the KCPE, the expected mean is 50 with a standard deviation of 15 for a paper marked out of 100. This may help bring a balance that considers children from such backgrounds and those with reading/learning challenges. We should not end it here, though. We need to find better ways to solve the challenges of unequal circumstances, and we may need a different perspective to solve the challenges to quality education.
What does either passing or unfortunately failing this exam mean for a poor child—for whom the only thing they had was hope? There is anxiety for the poor child: what’s next from here? For some, they have no hope to proceed with their formal education after low marks because, like me years back when I was met with the same challenge, I knew right away what completing primary education meant. I was not able to continue with my high school education despite the fact that I was among the top candidates in my year. Both my parents had lost their jobs and they could not afford to pay for my high school fees, with that I dropped out at the primary level and waited for another 7 years for a kind well-wisher who supported me to join high school at a later stage in life—BUT this can change… or can it?
After this exam, funders and individual philanthropists will place their support and resources on the learners who got better grades. Everyone else is left out. Furthermore, those left out with no support make up the largest percentage of young people, and the cycle repeats itself.
As a country, we continue to sink deeper and deeper into a cycle of poor educational outcomes, and we need more resources to solve the challenges that come as a result– challenges including increased crime, poor mental health, poor health and disease control, hunger, unemployment, and even climate change. We invest a great amount of energy, resources, and faith in a few select students–those who show us what we want to see–and to individuals and organizations that are giving us gratification. We leave the rest out, and then we hope for a better return on investment. We hope that the problem of poverty and injustice will somehow magically end.
Breaking the cycle requires a more deliberate attempt to go deeper and look at patterns and make changes that sometimes are not typically what the rest of the people expect. We may need to find changes to issues and problems that can not be solved using simple bandaids or one-size-fits all solutions. As a student of Adaptive Leadership, thanks to Eric Martin and the Adaptive Change Advisors, I have learned to look at situations from a different perspective and from many angles. What if the problem is not just getting good grades? What if the problem is something else? What other factors, besides academic proficiency, are influencing a child’s outcomes at school? When we dig deeper into the challenges at hand, we slowly learn that there is a matrix of challenges affecting student learning. In digging deeper, we may get some answers, maybe not all answers, but we will be taking a step forward and towards our aspirations.
There has been a lot of money and resources invested in reducing poverty or even an attempt to end it. I am challenging development organizations, change agents, investors, and funders in the education sector today, to look at these challenges in education from a different perspective and perhaps bring all stakeholders involved, including the children to the table and continue finding meaningful ways to solve this monster and not just use band-aid solutions that unfortunately creeps back up each time we think we have solved the challenge once and for all.
Someone asked me a few years back why I do the work I do at Elimu Fanaka; why do I care? My work at Elimu Fanaka is driven by passion, lived experiences, and a desire to change the situation on the ground. I see communities that are poor with solutions and without resources and stakeholder support to solve these challenges. I see communities that are struggling because they live in places that are more complex grounds to break, and they too have given up. I see the lack of representation of someone who has broken the cycle and returned to show the rest the “how-to”. I see a lack of recognition, appreciation, and stakeholders’ support.
We just concluded the 2021 KCPE, and our learners at Elimu Fanaka worked so hard this year despite the already ongoing challenges of the pandemic. Some are from challenging backgrounds, yet they have worked so hard and have put in their best. This year, the top candidate from all our 7 schools had 402 marks and was from Mbulia primary school, where we are setting up a second community library. A call to celebrate.
Additionally, the leading candidate in the coast province is from the county where we work and had 421 marks. This is exciting to see—because Taita Taveta, like most of the coastal region, is seen as a region where education is not taken seriously.
I have searched through the education-related news articles from at least 4 different major newspapers, and there was no mention of these victories in those that I read. This lack of representation compounds our challenges as educators. We are more likely to keep seeing this cycle over and over unless we break that lack of representation, build collaboration, and bring everyone to the table. How will anyone learn why children from remote and rural communities don’t go to school, or if they do, why they don’t do well in academics in the end? Or why these people continue living in poverty? I invite you to ponder the questions with me, and together let’s find out what we can do to change this if at all we can.
At Elimu Fanaka, we are investing in creating holistic education. Our goal is to impact the communities like those we serve by providing learners with a full-on experience inside and outside the school. We aim to build resilience and grit in the characters and lives of these children from underserved/under-represented rural communities so they too can be a part of the solution.
Elimu Fanaka uses education as a tool for creating positive change and schools as centres for community transformation. We use Arts & Culture, Functional Libraries & Technology, and Mentorship & Capacity Building to work alongside the community to find solutions to challenges they face together, including the lack of representation and stakeholders’ support.
Join us in the cause by sharing our work with as many people in your network so that together we can break the cycle. Follow us on all our social media platforms, and invite your friends and network to follow and share about Elimu Fanaka with their friends and network as we all create the power of one plus one! ~ Kazi Mghendi, Elimu Fanaka Founder & Team Lead