How Grade 10 placement process dealt a fatal blow to low-tier schools

Grade 10 placement into senior school was meant to be the first real test of the Competency-Based Education’s promise: a system anchored on values, merit, fairness, and respect for individual pathways. Instead, the process has exposed a painful contradiction. What should have been a clean, transparent transition has been riddled with bribery, manipulation, and revision loopholes that openly contradict the very values CBE claims to uphold. In one stroke, an otherwise value-based curriculum has been placed on shaky moral ground, not because of pedagogy, but because of how power and privilege were allowed to distort opportunity.

At the heart of CBC is the idea that learners are different, gifted in different ways, and should progress through pathways that best match their demonstrated competencies. Senior schools were carefully categorized from C1 to C4 to reflect this diversity of ability, resources, and specialization. Placement was supposed to respect these distinctions. Instead, the first and second revisions of senior school slots became an open invitation for gaming the system. Learners were encouraged—sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly—to seek admission into schools they had not initially qualified for, not on the basis of newly demonstrated competence, but on influence, money, and connections.

The result was a predictable but devastating cascade. C4 qualifiers revised their choices upward to C3 senior schools. C3 qualifiers pushed further into C2 schools. C2 qualifiers stretched into C1 schools. Merit quietly exited the room while ambition, pressure, and inducement took its seat. On paper, it may look like mobility or aspiration. In reality, it was a systematic erosion of standards. The placement ladder was climbed not by effort or evidence of readiness, but by who could shout loudest, pay fastest, or call the right office.

This distortion has produced a cruel irony. While top-tier senior schools are now congested with learners whose preparedness varies widely, C4 senior schools—designed to serve a critical role in the CBC ecosystem—are staring at dangerously low numbers. These schools were not meant to be dumping grounds or symbols of failure. They were meant to offer focused pathways, technical strengths, and contextualized learning environments aligned with the needs of particular learners and communities. By starving them of numbers, the system has effectively declared them inferior, undoing years of messaging about dignity in all learning pathways.

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What makes this especially tragic is that CBE is not an exam-centred curriculum in theory. It is value-centred. Integrity, fairness, responsibility, social justice, and respect for process are not optional extras; they are the curriculum. When learners watch adults manipulate placement outcomes through bribery and backdoor revisions, the lesson absorbed is far more powerful than anything written in a syllabus. They learn that rules are flexible for those with means. They learn that merit is negotiable. They learn that values are preached, not practiced.

The politicization of the placement process only deepened the damage. Instead of being shielded as a professional, technical exercise, placement became a political talking point, a public relations contest, and, in some cases, a favour-distribution mechanism. Commercial interests quickly followed. Middlemen emerged. Cartels found space. What should have been a quiet, dignified administrative process turned into a marketplace where senior school slots became commodities. In such an environment, the child stops being a learner and becomes a bargaining chip.

Defenders of the revisions argue that learners were simply exercising choice. But choice without structure, limits, and ethical enforcement is not empowerment; it is chaos. CBC does not promise unlimited upward mobility at every stage. It promises appropriate placement, growth over time, and multiple chances to progress through demonstrated competence. Forcing learners into schools they are not ready for does not help them; it sets them up for frustration, underperformance, and eventual disengagement. At the same time, it undermines those who were genuinely qualified for those slots but lacked the means to compete in a corrupted process.

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The long-term consequences are worrying. Schools will struggle to plan when numbers do not reflect reality. Teachers in overcrowded C1 and C2 schools will face classrooms with wider ability gaps than anticipated. Learners pushed beyond their readiness levels may internalize failure not as a temporary challenge, but as a personal inadequacy. Meanwhile, C4 schools risk being labeled irrelevant, leading to reduced investment, demoralized staff, and eventual closure. A curriculum designed to diversify success risks recreating the same old hierarchy CBC was meant to dismantle.

Most damaging of all is the signal sent to society. If the very first cohort transitioning fully under CBC experiences a placement process defined by bribery and manipulation, public trust in the curriculum is weakened. Parents begin to see CBC not as a moral reset, but as a repackaged system vulnerable to the same old vices. Learners learn cynicism early. Values education becomes theatre.

If CBE is to survive as more than a slogan, this moment must be confronted honestly. Placement must be reclaimed from politics, commerce, and cartels. Revisions must be tightly regulated and grounded strictly in merit and verified competencies. Schools across all categories must be protected and respected as integral parts of one system. Most importantly, adults must remember that children are always watching. A curriculum that teaches values but practices corruption is not just inconsistent; it is destructive. The tragedy is not that the system was flawed, but that a good system was allowed to be mocked by those entrusted to implement it.

By Ashford Kimani

Ashford teaches English and Literature in Gatundu North Sub-county and serves as Dean of Studies.