A recent report by Uwezo, a civil
society group that monitors educational achievement, revealed that although
access to education has expanded, the quality of learning has stagnated.
A majority of students will complete
primary school without being able to read or write or add. The Uwezo report
found that more than two out of every three pupils who have completed two years
of primary school fail to pass basic tests in English, Swahili or Math.
Stakeholders in the education sector
have raised questions about the state of teaching and learning from
kindergarten to university. Taxpayers and parents are concerned about the value
and returns to public investment in education.
Employers are asking whether graduates of
our education system have the necessary skills and creativity to ensure
competiveness in globalized knowledge economy. The minders of Kenya’s vision
2030 must worry. Its attainment is predicated on the abundance of creative
imagination and innovation, especially among the youth.
There are fundamental systemic problems
with Kenya’s education system. We can enumerate ad lib the foibles of the 8-4-4-education
system. At the school level, the curriculum is unwieldy. There are unspeakable problems
with the quality of teachers. Failure to invest in high quality public schools
and universities has encouraged a ruthless exam-centric culture, which has
stripped learning from schools and undermined the cardinal goal of education.
Owing to pressure to attain and maintain
high grades, teachers teach to the test and mandate extra classes under the
pretext of completing an ungainly syllabus. Today most public high schools have
boarding facilities, ostensibly to sequester and drill out creative imagination
and playful discovery from our children.
Immoderate emphasis on standardized national
testing has led to grade or test score inflation and numerous exam-cheating
scandals. Precious resources are diverted to preparatory testing and learning
time is lost as students spend weeks preparing for the tests, and preparing
tests and scoring them consume valuable teaching time. It gets better. On a
designated day, just before the start of the national exams, parents and
teachers pack churches and school assembly halls with bended knees and
beseeching hearts to pray for divine wisdom.
Thirty-six years ago, an American
sociologist, Donald Campbell, made an intuitive observation that became known
as Campbell’s Law. The basic idea of Campbell’s Law is that the more you base major
social decisions on a singular outcome or criteria, the more likely it is that people
will either cheat or try to game the system.
High scores in Kenyan Certificate of
Primary Education (KCPE) determine the kind of secondary school a student will
be admitted to. Private primary schools are notoriously famous for these
super-high scores. A majority of students who ace the KCPE examinations gain
admission to the highly coveted so-called national schools. An inordinate
proportion of students from these national schools get admission into prestigious
undergraduate programs in science, engineering, medicine, law and business in public
universities.
But high-test scores are not equivalent
to enhanced individual capacity for critical thinking and complex reasoning.
Many students, a majority with super high test scores, come to college poorly
prepared – thanks to the drill and exam-centric approach of primary and secondary
school – for the demanding academic demands of university education.
My experience while teaching 3rd
year undergraduate engineering students at a leading public university was
uninspiring. While their motivation and effort was impressively high, these “A”
students were atrociously weak at seeing connections, synthesizing information,
extrapolating ideas or generating hypotheses. Sadly, our undergraduate programs
are not developing the capacity for writing, critical thinking, complex
reasoning and problem solving.
Teachers and professors are in
agreement that teaching students to think critically and intuitively and ensuring
that graduates at all level of the education system are capable of independent,
analytical and logical thinking must be the ultimate mission of our education
system. There is consensus that the exam-centric education system has created a
citizenry more adept at imitation and mindless execution than creative thinking
and innovation.
A radical change in Kenya’s education is
needed to enable learning and build the human capital necessary for socio-economic
and technological transformation imagined in Vision 2030. I offer some ideas
for education reform:
·
Introduce
student-centred and problem-based approach to teaching and learning to encourage, inquiry- and-discovery-based learning to support retention and
application knowledge.
·
Eliminate standardized
national testing in primary and high school and introduce a seamless
kindergarten to high school system.
·
Assess learning through
multiple measures, including formative assessments and student portfolios.
Portfolios enable teachers and students to share the responsibility for setting
individual learning goals and evaluating progress.
·
Eliminate joint admission to
undergraduate programs and empower universities to design and administer admissions.
Ultimately, the key to education reform
is high quality teachers and a curriculum that allows children to be children, while
challenging them to play, experiment, discover, reflect and doubt.