KNEC Asked to Change the grading System; Proposal
The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) grading system has undergone recommendations from the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER).
The team requests that KNEC discontinue using the current marking system for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education test (KCSE), and on Tuesday it submitted its findings to President William Ruto.
The team suggests that KNEC base its calculation of the KCSE exam mean score on a student’s performance in five other areas in addition to mathematics, English, or Kiswahili.
Seven subjects are currently taken into account by the KCSE grading system, including English and Kiswahili, Mathematics, two science disciplines, and two additional subjects.
The team claimed that certain students are harmed by this computation because their best-performing classes are not taken into account, if not within the cluster.
The panel noted that whereas mathematics and science classes evaluate students’ numeracy, English and Kiswahili both measure students’ literacy.
With the radical plan, students who struggle with English will still be able to enrol in fields like engineering, law, and medicine, which presently demand better English test scores regardless of Kiswahili proficiency.
KNEC Asked to Change the grading System; Proposal
Additionally, students who perform well in Kiswahili will now be able to study education at the university level even if they perform poorly in English.
Universities have recently increased the cluster points for various degrees, including education, and now demand that applicants have at least a C (Plain) in English before being admitted to the programme.
However, under the new recommendations, universities would only take into account either English or Kiswahili, and KNEC would similarly exclude both disciplines from consideration when calculating mean grades.
“Students who do not receive satisfactory grades in the exams frequently stop attending school, which significantly reduces our young population.” Part of the report was read.
