Education secretary Fred Matiang’i once again offered the country yet another dose of his favourite shock therapy medicine with the early release of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination results, weeks ahead of the usual timeline.
And as it were last year, very few students made the C+ cut for admission to university. Only 77,000 students attained C+ and above down from 88,929 last year – worsening the trend that left universities with more capacity than there are students to admit.
It cannot be denied that Dr Matiangi has shown unparalleled zeal for his job and helped the country deal with challenges such as rampant cheating in exams that had become near routine in our midst.
But there is increasing feeling that the minister and his team of bureaucrats at Jogoo House are not going beyond cosmetics in their actions.
For instance, while releasing exams with speed is good, it is not the biggest challenge facing our education system.
Rather, the Ministry of Education should seriously think about a holistic approach to fixing the system -- most critically how to improve overall scores in national exams.
It should, for instance, be alarming, not a source of pride, that more than 35,000 students totally failed in the exams having scored an E grade because such outcomes are often very harmful in the long term.
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