KNEC issue Compulsory Subjects to determine Overall Grade At KCSE
Millions of students who scored below an 8-4-4 on their Form Four national examinations will have more opportunities to raise their final scores as a result of changes to the grading system.
President William Ruto approved the additional recommendations at a meeting with the team working on education reforms to revise the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).
The two mandatory subjects that must be utilised to calculate the learners’ final KCSE grades are suggested by the Presidential Working Party for Education Reform.
Mathematics and one language (either English or Kiswahili) will be mandatory topics.
Along with the candidate’s top five subjects, these two subjects will be taken into consideration in the final score.
Currently, the Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) assesses applicants based on their performance in two additional topics as well as the five necessary subjects.
Knec takes into account a candidate’s performance in two sciences chosen from Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, two mandatory languages—English and Kiswahili, and one mandatory subject—Mathematics.
Religious Education, Geography, History, Business Studies, Agriculture, and other technical courses are among the options for the final two subjects.
The reforms team suggested, among other things, “Develop guidelines for calculating the average KCSE score (based on English/Kiswahili, Mathematics, and five other best subjects).”
Within a year, the team suggested putting the changes into practise. Therefore, if the new idea is adopted, the 2023 candidates will reap the benefits first.
Over 5,000 of the 11,000 secondary schools in the nation, the bulk of which are found in rural areas, do not send a single student to college, according to President William Ruto’s statement on Wednesday.
He claimed that it provided a reason for them to reflect on their lives. Ruto emphasised that many of the students who attended their universities were those whose parents could afford to pay for a particular level of education and those whose children attended academies.
He said that they needed to reassess the situation since Kenya could not go on in this way.
At the Open University of Kenya’s launch in Konza Technopolis City, President Ruto gave a speech.
KNEC CEO David Njengere praised the recommendations and said that the present grading system has crushed the dreams of many graduates.
According to Dr. Njengere, the changes will prohibit students in the final five 8-4-4 classes from achieving their goals.
There are five sections in the country’s 8-4-4 educational system at the moment. The final generation, who will start secondary school in 2024 and graduate in 2027, will take the KCPE exam this year.
Dr. Njengere claims that the recommendation of the Presidential working group will redesign the evaluation system to reflect the student’s career interests.
Njengere clarified that the 8-4-4 system’s biggest drawback was its rigid and severely constrained curriculum.
Upon the system’s completion, every child was reportedly obliged to take the same tests, regardless of their specific strengths.
Their final grade was significantly influenced by this testing. He added that the curriculum covered a broad range of courses, making it difficult for any child to manage.
Njengere claimed that understanding the problem requires a close look at the KCSE’s design. He noted that the test had been created with a dual objective in mind.
Dr. Njengere cites the first as an evaluation of the pupils’ performance over the course of their four years of secondary education.
He asserts that the second purpose is to act as a deciding factor in whether a student would enrol in college or a university.
According to Dr. Njengere, the latter has caused resentment in many Form Four graduates because it dilutes their overall achievement.
The cascading impact, according to him, inhibits thousands of people from continuing their education through the secondary level.
According to Njengere, the KCSE has been diminished to a test that determines the student’s future without respect for its assessment objective because of the fierce rivalry in the final exam.
In an interview, Dr. Njengere said that the curriculum’s requirements are not intended to prevent people from making life transitions, regardless of their age or academic accomplishment.
Transitioning, he emphasised, is crucial and shouldn’t be hindered in any way.
He used the example of an applicant interested in the social sciences who must pass two science courses in order to avoid having their final grade lowered and risk being rejected from their desired programme.
KNEC issue Compulsory Subjects to determine Overall Grade At KCSE
No matter how well they did in the humanities and languages, according to Dr. Njengere, their overall score would be badly impacted by three specific topics.
They therefore anticipated receiving an average grade, probably a C, which they believed would not be attributable to their own stupidity but rather the demands of the system.
“We are punishing the students,” he continued. For instance, we squander resources in the system when we require a student who excels in one subject to simultaneously pass in another, such as English and the humanities.
Students who are drawn to science who need to be tested in English and literature, Kiswahili, and Fasihi face the same situation.
The Presidential working group raised worry over the requirement of some topics potentially impeding pupils who want to pursue a particular career route after secondary school that doesn’t necessitate receiving great grades in all subjects.
According to Dr. Njengere, all topics are important for developing core abilities like literacy and maths, even for pupils who may not ultimately use them in the workplace.
But he is adamant that there needs to be a definite line drawn between obtaining this essential information and rating the student on the KCSE exams.
He explained that they would evaluate the person’s performance because they required to have some basic literacy and numeracy skills.
Additionally, it was becoming clear that Kenya had been ranked lower than other nations under the current grading system.
According to an analysis of statistics from the East African region, Kenya has the fewest distinctions, or Grade A and A- (minus) in the final national test.
Kenya’s results, in contrast, dipped to just 0.85%. This shows that out of the entire number of candidates, only 7,553 received a Grade A or A- (minus), which is comparable to a distinction in Uganda and Tanzania.
“At this point, you start to wonder if the issue isn’t the students but rather the way our kids are graded. “Perhaps we are using a system that is a little bit too punitive for them, and we are not distinguishing between achievement and placement,” Dr. Njengere said.
Performing the final secondary school exams under the 8-4-4 and 7-4-2-3 systems, respectively, yields the following comparison:
According to the analysis, 3,509 test takers between 1983 and 1986 (3.21 percent) received Division 1, the top O-level mark.
But the numbers sharply declined after the 8-4-4 was put into place.
For instance, only one applicant out of 130,639 received an A on the KCSE in 1989. There were 131,932 applicants in 1990, but none were given an A. Then, only two out of 166,712 applicants in 1991 received an A.
The greatest results were in 2014, however just 0.635% of all candidates achieved an A, despite the widespread exam cheating and malpractice that existed before the 2016 revisions.
“Assuming there was widespread cheating, we would not be able to award even one percent of the applicant pool with the highest grade,” he said.
KNEC issue Compulsory Subjects to determine Overall Grade At KCSE
