2023 KCSE Candidates to smile as KNEC unveil Better Grading System
Major changes to the way Form Four national exams are graded might provide millions of pupils who score below 8-4-4 a better chance to raise their final results.
President William Ruto approved the updated suggestions for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) review when he met with the education reform team.
The Presidential Working Party for Education Reform suggests using two required subjects to grade KCSE exams in order to determine the students’ final results.
One language (English or Kiswahili) and mathematics will be required subjects.
The candidate’s top five performing topics and these two subjects will be combined to determine the final score.
The Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) currently grades applicants based on their performance in the five required topics and the two other best-performing subjects.
Knec evaluates candidates based on their performance in two sciences from either Biology, Chemistry, or Physics, two languages from either English or Kiswahili, and mathematics, all of which are required.
The final two subjects come from humanities/arts courses and are chosen from technical subjects including agriculture, business studies, geography, and history as well as religious education, geography, and history.
The reforms team suggested that “Develop guidelines for computing KCSE mean score (based on English/Kiswahili, Maths, and five other best subjects)” in their suggestions.
The group suggested that the adjustments be made within a year. This indicates that, if they are, the candidates for 2023 will reap the benefits of the new plan first.
On Wednesday, President William Ruto noted that, of the 11,000 secondary schools in the nation, over 5,000 are in rural areas and do not send even one student to college.
“That is a reason for us to reflect on our lives. Many of the students that enrol in our universities are either academy pupils or the offspring of wealthy parents who can afford a particular level of education. Kenya cannot continue in this manner; we must reconsider, he remarked.
At Konza Technopolis City’s launch of the Open University of Kenya, President Ruto made a speech.
The recommendations were supported by KNEC Chief Executive Officer David Njengere, who also noted that the current grading structure has crushed the hopes of many graduates.
According to Dr. Njengere, the modifications will prohibit students in the eight-four-four system’s final five classes from salvaging their aspirations.
Currently, the 8-4-4 educational system is used in five classes across the nation. The final generation will take the KCPE exam this year, which means they’ll start secondary school in 2024 and graduate in 2027.
The Presidential working group’s suggestion, according to Dr. Njengere, will reform the grading system to be sensitive to the professional interests a student wants to follow.
“The difficulty with what we have been doing with 8-4-4 is that it has a very constrained and rigid curriculum that, at the moment of exit, requires every child—regardless of their academic prowess—to take the same tests in the same subjects, and those results count towards their final grade. For any child, it is a full-range, extremely difficult task, Njengere added.
Njengere stated that it is essential to examine the KCSE’s design in order to comprehend the issue. He noticed that the examination was chosen to fulfil two purposes.
The first step, according to Dr. Njengere, is to evaluate the students’ performance over the course of their four years in secondary school. The second function, according to him, is that it serves as a stepping stone that establishes whether the student will continue on to college or university.
The latter, however, has been a pain in the neck for many Form Four graduates because the grading method dilutes their overall achievement, according to Dr. Njengere.
He claimed that the cascading impact prevents thousands of people from continuing their education through the secondary level.
Njengere claimed that the KCSE has been reduced to an exam that determines where the student proceeds and disregards the evaluation purpose due to fierce rivalry in the final test.
In an interview with the Standard on Wednesday, Dr. Njengere stated, “The demands of the curriculum are not supposed to inhibit you in any way from transitioning because you must transition in life, whether because of age or achievement.”
He gave the example of a candidate oriented towards the social sciences who must deal with two science subjects that they must pass because if they fail those two, then the final score will be diluted and they run the risk of being excluded from their dream course.
Dr. Njengere explained, “This means that no matter how strong I am in my humanities and languages, these three will drag me down, giving me a mean score that will give me an aggregate of a C or whatever. This is not because I am stupid, but rather because of the requirements of the system.
We are penalising the students, he continued. The youngster can’t do that, thus we are wasting resources in the system. As an illustration, we tell a student who excels in the sciences that they must pass in English, humanities, and so on.
Students who are more drawn to the sciences who must be evaluated in English and literature, Kiswahili, and Fasihi face the same situation.
“In essence, the question the Presidential working party is posing is whether it is necessary for some topics to hold you back as you approach secondary school graduation when you want to pursue a particular career path that does not necessarily need that you pass at a very high level in all of these subjects.
2023 KCSE Candidates to smile as KNEC unveil Better Grading System
All disciplines are crucial, according to Dr. Njengere, even for students who may not ultimately use the subjects in their jobs for core understanding like literacy and numeracy.
The attainment of this basic information and the evaluation of the learner when they take the KCSE exams, he says, must be clearly separated.
“We will assess you on achievement,” he stated. “You need to have some fundamental knowledge in numeracy and literacy.” It is becoming clear that Kenya has been placed lower than other nations under the current grading system.
For instance, an analysis of data from East Africa reveals that Kenya ranks lowest in the number of distinctions, also known as the top grades, that is, Grade A and A- (minus) in the final national test.
Kenya’s results, in contrast, declined by only 0.85%. Only 7,553 candidates, or the equivalent of a distinction in Uganda and Tanzania, were able to receive a Grade A or A- (minus).
“At this point, you start convincing yourself that our children’s grading system may be the issue rather than the kids. Perhaps our system is a little too harsh for them, and we don’t distinguish between achievement and placement, suggested Dr. Njengere.
Another contrast between the 8-4-4 education system and the 7-4-2-3 education system, which it replaced, is the performance of the final secondary school exam:
According to the data, 3,509 candidates—or 3.21 percent of those who took the exams—obtained Division 1, the highest O-level mark, between 1983 and 1986.
However, the numbers sharply decreased after the 8-4-4 was implemented.
For instance, only one student out of 130,639 applicants received a Grade A in the KCSE in 1989. There were 131,932 candidates the year after, in 1990, but none received an A. And in 1991, there were 166,712 candidates, only two of them received an A.
Even with the undercurrents of exam cheating and malpractice that raged prior to the changes of 2016, data from the Knec shows the best results were in 2014, yet even then, only 0.635% of the total number of candidates received an A.
If there was widespread cheating, he claimed, “we could not get even one percent of the entire candidate population receiving the top grade.”
2023 KCSE Candidates to smile as KNEC unveil Better Grading System
