Revise syllabus and not just past exam papers

Cabinet Secretary for Education, Prof George Magoha has advised KCPE and KCSE candidates to “revise the syllabus, not past examination papers”, saying they should not be lured into cheating in examinations by unscrupulous people.

Underlying the advice were several assumptions relevant to management of education—both at the school level and rules and regulations that govern education in general.

The national examinations are a month away. The basic assumption is that the candidates have been equipped with the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to primary and secondary education.

They have curriculum content—the totality of what the primary and secondary school system in this country prescribes—for them to proceed to the next tier of education and training.

The other assumption is that in the syllabus lie important facts, principles and concepts that they learned and which they may not have fully grasped. Or simply put, revisiting syllabus may refresh their memory and understanding in ways that no other strategy can do.

Interaction with the curriculum content of the subjects they will be examined in has the overall effect of reacquainting the students with the body of knowledge and information that teachers taught them.

It is that knowledge and information they need—in the immediate—to handle the forthcoming examinations.
Also implicit in Prof Magoha’s advice is that past paper questions cannot address what is called, Swiss cheese gaps. In educational lingo, Swiss cheese learning gaps occurs when learners move through a prescribed course, with gaps in knowledge, gaps in skills and gaps in attitudes without addressing them as they go to the next topics or concepts of increasing difficulties. Ideally, those gaps shouldn’t be there.

Examination papers

They were really meant to be filled by your course. Learners have varying degrees of mastery of the content in the examination subjects—thanks to the quality of teaching and learning environment the school accorded them.

Months and weeks to the examinations is the time the learners ought to revisit the syllabus—with the wise supervision of the teachers and leadership of the school—to address whatever grey areas the students could be having in particular subjects. Past examination papers are not stand-alone. The papers cannot fill the gaps or holes the students have in their possession of the prescribed body of knowledge and skills on which they will be tested.

Examinations exist in the service of the curriculum and not vice versa. They measure what the schools have imparted or developed in learners’ cognition.

The implications of all these is that the curriculum content in the syllabus is king; it is core to any education. An examination is an adjunct to education.

All told, however, revising past examination papers or any examination paper may be good practice. It should, however, be with reference to the syllabus, to topics or sets of concepts and principles and knowledge learned in the syllabus.

Test items are, but a sample of the knowledge in a curriculum or syllabus and not the whole body of the knowledge around a topic or concept in a syllabus.

The format

Test items alone cannot supply the knowledge, skills and attitudes implied in the topic or concept the test focuses. But revisiting the topic or concept in the syllabus has capacity to stimulate the minds of the students to think broadly and deeply about the concept or topic.

Students who still have difficulties in certain topics or concepts in a subject cannot gain much from dependence on past examinations papers. But they can gain something new, something useful by revisiting the topics in the syllabus, or through group discussion or peer teaching around a topic or a concept.

The past examination papers in a subject or a topic or concept may have called for a recitation of facts.

Other questions call upon students to solve problems they have not encountered before in a past examination.

They may alternatively ask them to analyse two sides of an argument and state their own position.

If the Kenya National Examinations Council twists questions on the same topic, students who overly relied on the format of previous examinations cannot effectively deal with it. But those who endeavoured to master the syllabus can, and with the least difficulty, if any.

Past papers don’t have the magic wand to tackle such questions. But the curriculum content has the magic key to enable the students to ably grapple with the questions. National exams are not just a bridge.

They exist to serve the needs of a national curriculum such as the one Kenya has. It measures how well the school system has transmitted knowledge, skills, and attitudes to children.

Mr Buhere is Communications Officer, Ministry of Education