Matiang’i hits out at public school teachers over poor KCPE show

Newly-appointed Education secretary Fred Matiang’i turned the heat on government-employed teachers over poor performance of public schools in this year’s KCPE exam, linking a steep dip in the students’ mean scores to their “absenteeism” from work.

The 2015 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination results released yesterday showed that the mean score of candidates from public schools dropped by seven percentage points to 180.87 marks.

Candidates in private primary schools recorded a slight improvement, achieving a mean score of 230.14 points up from 229.94 in the 2014 exam.

“This decrease in mean score could be attributed to the lack of teaching and learning during the five-week teachers’ strike that preceded the administration of the 2015 examination,” said Dr Matiang’i.

A prolonged teachers’ strike paralysed learning in public schools from early September, handing candidates in private institutions an advantage.

“The drop in mean scores in public schools is concerning and very worrying,” said a tough talking Dr Matiang’i.

Teacher truancy

Besides the strike which was precipitated by a pay dispute between the government and the tutors, Dr Matiang’i also took the podium to highlight truancy by teachers as the major malaise facing public schools.

The minister noted that teachers in public schools were skipping classes, some as much as 70 per cent of their lessons, stifling performance of pupils in the government-funded institutions.

A 2014 research by Breakthrough Foundation, an NGO, showed that public primary school teachers habitually miss their lessons, leaving students to study on their own if at all.

This truancy is despite fact that there is a “strong correlation between teacher attendance and high learning outcomes.”
“Teacher absenteeism is something we have to deal with” said the CS, who recently moved to the education docket from the ICT ministry.

“The trend is as high as 70 per cent in some counties. How then can we be surprised about the poor performance?” he posed rhetorically.

This year’s results show that 7,560 of the 927,789 candidates who sat this year’s exam scored between 401 and 500 marks, 201,986 of them had between 301 and 400 marks while 499,568 pupils, the majority, had between 201 and 300 marks.

Another 215,614 candidates had between 101 and 200 marks while 3,061 others scored between 0 and 100 marks.

This means that 50.93 per cent of this year’s candidates (or 472,568) who sat the exam between November 10 and 12 scored above 250 points out of the possible 500.

The CS put education officials on notice, saying their career progression would be dependent on students’ performance in their counties, which will be actively monitored by the ministry’s quality assurance team.

He instructed the Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) to disaggregate the results per county and release them to the relevant education chiefs including data on exam irregularities.

“Examinations do not test candidates alone. They are also measures of how we (Education stakeholders) have performed,” said Dr Matiang’i.

He warned that “performance, not presence, will determine mobility” up their career ladders in a swipe at officials who recently requested him to help push for promotions of persons who had stagnated in the same job groups for years.

Exam irregularities

This year’s KCPE saw an unprecedented level of cheating with screen shots of leaked exam papers doing the rounds in social media hours before students did the tests.

The numbers released yesterday, however, indicated that the number of students who were engaged in the vice were 2,709, the second highest tally in the past 10 years.

A total of 111 examination centres were listed as having been involved in the exam irregularities compared to the 334 centres that were reported in 2011 when the highest number of cheats (7,974) was recorded.

“We cannot condemn the lives of our children on account of our own irresponsibility. Examination cheating is the lowest form of intellectual dishonesty,” he said.

Collusion was the most common form of examination irregularity this year, constituting 98.7 per cent of the total number of examination irregularities a per cent less than last year.

157 people, including head teachers, deputy head teachers, teachers, university students, candidates, police officers and parents have so far been arrested and charged in relation to the crime.

Knec had at first dismissed cheating claims as false, but later admitted to the exam being highly compromised.

Prof Kabiru Kinyanjui, the council’s chairperson, yesterday admonished the vice calling on Kenyans to engage in “a critical and honest re-appraisal of our values, character and moral fiber.”

Prof Kabiru promised to implement a strategic plan that would “help weed out the unethical practice” in next year’s examination to ensure that it is “credible”. The council’s chief executive, Dr Joseph Kivilu, added that “investigations are currently being conducted to determine the root cause of the challenges are also encompassing the Knec staff.”

Dr Matiang’i said Prof Kabiru would be held to his promise in 2016.

In the same breath, he minister reproached the council for seemingly being unable to reel in cheating over the 30 years that the KCPE exam has been administered under the 8.4.4 system.

“We have 12 months to prepare for the national examinations it cannot be that we wait 12 months down the road and then we give all manner of excuses,” the CS said, essentially laying the blame at Knec’s doorstep.

“We must do whatever it takes to bring this matter to an end. We cannot live this way.”

Only 12 of the 47 counties did not report any cases of cheating during this year’s examination.

They are Taita Taveta, Tana River, Mombasa, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Siaya, Kilifi, Kiambu, Marsabit, Uasin Gishu, Kajiado and Elgeyo Marakwet.

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