The KCSE (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education) exams started last week on Monday and have therefore entered their second week as from yesterday.
I have just received information that several schools in a certain region of the country had in their possession one of the Mathematics examination papers that was done recently. One school even “revised” the paper in detail very early in the morning on the very day that students were to sit for the exam. They revised the paper with their Maths teacher!! Can you imagine that? And sure enough, to nobody’s surprise the exact paper they were revising is what came as the exam.
This has led me to make a few more enquiries and I have discovered that these “leakages” are now very “normal” in the country with many students purchasing papers for about Kshs 3,000. In fact many schools last year were not ranked because of massive leakages, however the results of individual students in those school were allowed to stand.
Even spirited efforts by the Kenya national Examination Council this year to clamp down on cheating do not seem to have yielded much because the “cancer” has spread too far and wide to be stemmed easily.
I find this very difficult to absorb because when I went to school, things were not like this and in fact we used to frown on examination cheats. Now it seems that the practice of cheating has become as acceptable as corruption has become in the country.
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Chris, please toboa the region these exam leakages are more prevalant.
ReplyDeleteWe become the society we build. Exam cheating is symptomatic of the fraudulent lives Kenyans live collectively. From the small steps of packaging bribes as gifts while the principal aim is gai unfair or undeserved advatage over others to grandiose scams like Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg.
ReplyDeleteKenyan readers outside may admonish such practices but on retrospection they won't cast the first stone. Reason? They greased somebosy's hand to get PP or some papers signed. So if the 'elite' falls for it why not the hollopoloi?
The greatest fear is what quality of society and graduates we are producing. Expanding higher education is a good idea but failing to correct Moi's myopic expansion structures is a sure recipe for what we are witnessing now.
It starts from Private school better known as academies. Spare me the hollow defense for the so-called previvale/rich. Propriators of these acadmies are smart enterprenuers cashing in on ourr collective 'success' insecuty.
Teachers are Kenyans too and they know the rise in profile from good performance so why not buy it and stop wasting donkey years earing it? Our parents are willing partners in crime. In effect teh whole lot arre creating a monster that will eventualy consume our national pride. We are not far from the brodas with green PP, are we?
Taabu,
ReplyDeleteFor once in a very long time, I agree with you unreservedly. Kalamari, lets not try to tribalise (for me region is synonymous with jimbo, which some see as tribe hence the heated 'debate' over the concept. I'll concern myself with that at a different time) just about any problem that ails Kenya. Its a national problem and for once, shall we tackle it as a national issue?
Cheating in exams is the reason its so hard to stamp out corruption in Kenya, no matter how hard we shout. If your teachers and parents (no less) show that you do actually succeed by being deceptive, I don't know what it would take for you to unlearn that deception. It gets harder to build virtues like hard work, fair trade etc once these young adults hit the real world where resources are extremely limited. Its pretty gross.
Cheating in the exams has become so normal that its funny it comes as a suprice. Us guys had geography leakage that we got from one of the national school in our district, that was given to my classmate. But of coz ... we kept quiet and only a few candidates knew ... our teacher had no idea. Most of these papers are available ... and whole things is handled with a lot of confidentiality.
ReplyDeleteAnd when this people go to college tha same continues, just need to bribe a lecturer and you will pass your exams. So when this person gets to the real things of life they just continue with what they have been doing.
That is why i always insist that change is on an individual level, not from the political leaders.