Why professors would struggle to join varsity if told to redo KCSE exams

President William Ruto during the start of KCPE and KEPSEA exams at Kikuyu Township Primary School, Kiambu County on October 30, 2023. [PCS, Standard]

You are what you eat, so the old adage goes. And you are what you think, obviously.

This is quite true for me. In the nearly 10 years that I have been directing examinations for a national university, thereby interacting daily with various aspects of student matriculation and assessment, I sometimes have dreamed falling asleep in the exam room only to wake up sweat-drenched as the invigilator demands for the answer booklet.

Or I forgot to carry the pen to the venue; or the battery of my scientific calculator suddenly dies as the envelopes containing question papers are being ripped open. For some reason, these obviously Freudian experiences make me genuinely edgy.

What is the root cause of the all-encompassing dread for national examinations among my countrymen?

The systems of education preceding the newly incepted CBC (Competency-Based Curriculum) - all anchored on the rigid and prescriptive Knowledge Based Curriculum (KBC)- have had a way of casting summative national examinations as the narrow Mara River, where during the migratory season, ravenous and brutal hordes of crocodiles await desperate ungulates that have no other crossing points to greener pastures.

As such, every Kenyan has had to undergo an academic rite of passage lasting only hours at a time, but requiring a lifetime in school for preparation.

The KCPE, KCSE and other conglomerative examinations became the sole determinants of your subsequent place in the social food chain, and invariably attained a life -and-death-essence.

The 8-4-4 has been a particularly brutal arena in that regard. The glory of slaying these dragons, or the ignominy of failing them often stuck with you forever. This also greatly incentivised cheating.

In contrast, the CBC with its formative structures and declared promise of bringing the best out of a person seems like a much better alternative.

No wonder prayer days for candidates are such passionate occasions! In one that I recently attended at a renowned boys’ school in Kikuyu town, we sang, jubilated prayed and gesticulated energetically alongside the candidates, intermittently indulging in the ‘repeat after me’ kind of resolution-making. The elaborate ritual was obviously intended to cast out the fear of the impending KCSE.

One prayer warrior greatly enthused us as she earnestly hyper-articulated in her entreaty to God about “arresting without mercy” all forces “inside and outside the natural realms” that may hamper smooth execution of the Kenya National Examination Council’s (Knec) upcoming exercise. To that I say Amen!

And talking about Knec – where I once aspired to work - brings me to an examination-related fantasy that I cannot get off my mind: How would a randomly picked coterie of professors fare if tested in KCSE after decades of teaching at the university, suddenly and without prior preparation? 

This thought, no doubt, sounds like idle hallucination. Yet from the standpoint of research, it makes a lot of sense.

Would the gray heads who epitomise scholarly erudition outshine all the 965,500 youngsters countrywide prepping for the exam, or would the famous fate that befell Cambridge University professors who reportedly played chess with inmates of the Bedlam Insane Asylum in 1883 befall them? (The professors lost hopelessly). Would they agree to participate in the first place? Might they struggle to ‘qualify for university’ and probably make embarrassing newspaper headlines?

If Knec ever contemplates this interesting experiment which might end up unravelling the troublesome discontinuity between university education and high school content, and maybe ultimately reduce the academic culture-shock freshmen experience upon joining Kenyan universities, I will gladly participate.

Yet not without inherent risks. Other than in my teaching subject mathematics, perhaps computer studies, physics and English composition too, my catastrophic grades in most other subjects would probably be the talk of town for a long time. My only consolation would be that in my own day, my Fourth Form performance ranked right there among the very best in the country!

Which brings me to a final word for the current KCSE candidates. The banter above concerns old men with potbellies being asked to run a marathon they once conquered in distant memory.

No. You are lithe and mentally fit morans who have been singularly stalking this examination beast for a long time with the help of your teachers and the support of your parents. Use it only as a stepping stone and a teachable moment.

So go for it! Loosen a bit on extra-curriculum activities, and hit the high points by revising using past papers. This condenses your spectrum of study to the most relevant content. It is no secret that sometimes, good examination questions are recycled, and it is not a crime to indulge in ‘timing’ or ‘strategic reading’, if you like.

Eat well, exercise and sleep adequately, but don’t overdo. My experience is that remedial teaching should not continue too close to the examination, it ruins personal strategy and creativity.

I am sure that these clichés and all other nuggets of practical wisdom inculcated in you by your minders will work every time. Especially if capped with trust in God.

Best of luck!