By Wafula Wekati
National exams are currently underway. The country’s obsession with excellence in such standardized tests results in ridiculous rituals. Teachers, parents and other stakeholders go to great lengths to help their students achieve stellar grades in the tests.
As a matter of course, an exam is meant to assess learning outcomes. In Kenya, we attach pointless prestige to good grades leading to absurd anxiety as the exam approaches. Social media is now awash with desperate attempts to predict questions that may be tested in the exams.
Some unscrupulous opportunists have taken advantage of the craze and seek to dupe unsuspecting teachers, students and parents by purporting that they have access to exam leakage. They ply their trade brazenly on Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram. Students have to be wary of such swindlers lest they are swindled in broad daylight.
Predicting exam questions is a herculean task that is next to impossible but teachers will hear none of it. A good case in point is how my colleagues who teach English – the lot who insist that they are teachers of English and not English teachers – are racking their brains, hell-bent on predicting the questions that will test functional skills in this year’s English paper one exam.
Some swear on their grandmother’s graves that a question on ‘emails’ cannot be tested since some learners have never accessed a computer or a smartphone, never mind that the item is part of the syllabus and is taught in form four. Others aver that since many ‘big schools’ tested ‘minutes’ or ‘speech’ in their mock exams, the items are likely to feature in this year’s national exam. They are quick to forget that some of those exams are printed by sly imposters who guilefully pass them off as the real thing. The predictions may be right. But chances are that they are wrong. As a matter of fact, these are not predictions but a gamble based on baseless guesswork. Since the items are in the syllabus, any of them can be tested.
The exam is a few days away but teachers are losing sleep over it. We are biting our fingernails as we try to deliberate over the item that will most likely be tested. The exam council caught us flat footed when “letter writing” skill was tested three times in a row between 2018 and 2020. In 2021, the question tested the students’ ability to write a report.
To figure out that there is no specific predictable trend in setting these questions is not exactly rocket science. As much as we are in the dark concerning the specific item that will be tested, the objective of testing functional skills is clear as day: The student is expected to know the correct format, adhere to the rubric, use language pleasantly and attractively in order to communicate effectively and to some extent apply creativity.
For students armed with this insight and backed by hours of tireless practice in preparation, passing this question would be a walk in the park. A student who is well prepared can respond to any question whether it tests writing a speech, a public notice, a CV or minutes.
It is worrying that as the exam approaches, full-time teachers morph into part-time seers and prophets. Unless you are the Biblical Isaiah, Elijah or Jeremiah; consider refraining from proclaiming predictive powers or prophetic divination. Before we utter anything with certitude to the learners in these last days, we should circumspect.
It is ludicrous to attach lofty importance to these exams when ours is a country where frustrated graduates grapple with the plague of unemployment which is compounded by ineffective leadership and runaway corruption.
Ironically, sly businessmen and illiterate politicians own obscene amounts of wealth while the job market cannot contain the flood of jobless degree holders. Teachers, doctors and nurses decry poor pay whereas members of parliament, some of whom wrestle with fluency in English or Kiswahili, fight to increase their salaries based on unfounded whims and caprices.
It is refreshing that the conversation is slowly shifting from an education system that tests learning outcomes of diverse students with manifold abilities and challenges using one standard test; to a competency based system that will, hopefully, allow learners to pursue education and career paths based on their individual aptitude and interests.
We should also do away with categorization of secondary schools as national, extra-county etc. since the schools have unfair allocation of resources yet the students sit the same exams.
Moreover, employers today are more interested in skills such as communication, self-motivation, leadership, problem solving, decisiveness, flexibility etc. rather than examinations scores. They are keen on hiring individuals who can add practical value to an institution or company rather than one who could cram unrelated concepts and pass a standardized exam. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills can help you whether you seek employment or choose to employ yourself.
Ideally, functional writing items and other learning areas are meant to help the learners beyond school since they have lifelong functionalities. Therefore, let us equip learners with the ability to think critically and solve problems as opposed to spoon-feeding them by attempting to “predict” and cheat the system.
Teachers please spare yourself the ignominy of having to run for dear life with irate students hot on your heels after furnishing them with the wrong prediction. Let us approach exams with the integrity they deserve. Since attainment of stellar grades is considered a matter of life and death in our country, we cannot afford to play Russian roulette with the examinations.
Wekati is a teacher of English/Literature at a school in Bungoma County. Email: rikijimu@gmail.com
@wafulawekati on Twitter
