Ranking of students blocks their attitude towards learning

By PETER ODUOR

Most Standard Eight pupils and Form Four students sit exams at the beginning of every year in what has come to be known as ‘indexing’ or ‘entry examinations’.

The examination results are used to determine index numbers for the candidates to be used during registration for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) or the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE).

In some schools, the index numbers are used to determine which class or stream a student will occupy . 

Could this system of ranking candidates at the start of their final year be discriminatory and harmful to the children?

Teachers will tell you that the examination helps them know the strengths and abilities of the candidates. They will tell you that it helps them understand their students. But does it work? Maybe it does. Or maybe it achieves something else; the opposite of what it should.

A lot goes on during learning. Students learn from one another as they answer teachers’ questions orally or through group discussions; students also relate to one another depending on their performance – this one is mostly negative – and finally, students can either gain or lose ‘academic self-esteem’.

Lumping together students who are perceived to be weak in class and restricting them to that controlled environment is neither helpful nor sensitive.

Dr Alenga Amadi of Career Advisory Centre says entry or indexing examinations affect students’ attitude towards learning thereby impeding their progress.

Alenga says, “Attitude in education determines how one approaches their studies and eventually how they perform. That is why a positive attitude is important.  To keep a student confined to a particular group because they didn’t do well in an exam in the past is not proper.” 

He says that teachers ought to know that students can teach each other and categorising them using past performance alienates them into performers and failures.

This, he argues, gives the students the impression that their future is already determined.

So students and teachers will approach studies, sharing knowledge and teaching with the same ‘fate sealed’ attitude.

Most students will resign to the group they have landed in and not strive to get better.

In cases where the students are in the lower end, group discussions among them will not be productive.

Those on the high end will also either work hard to keep themselves in those positions or get complacent and ignore their studies.

The comfort in company that leads to resignation no doubt affects those in the low-end brackets of the indexing list.

An alternative to indexing examinations for ranking students would be first-come basis during payment of registration fees.

This would mean that the students get index numbers as they register for KCPE or KCSE. Schools could also consider random allocation of index numbers or according to alphabetical order of students’ names.

The psychological effect of being ranked index 202 because your registration fee was paid last would not impact as negatively on a candidate as being index 202 because you sat an exam and came up in position 202.

There is no Kenya National Examinations Council regulation indicating how index numbers should be awarded. The whole exercise is mostly left in the hands of school principals.