The state of education in the country is under tight
scrutiny with regards to performance of secondary schools. It is unbelievable
that it has taken the nation 7 long years to realize that academic titans like
Starehe Boys Center are losing their cutting edge vigor in academic success.
The recent released results of KCSE report 39 schools as "cheating
schools" in light of exam irregularities. Something that has found its way
as a parliamentary agenda with the Kenya National Examination Council being put
on the hot seat. Paul Wasanga, the CEO of KNEC has been mandated to explain why
the council listed certain schools as cheaters.
The 2013 KCSE results put Starehe at position 17 with an
aggregate of a B+ and sending top officers at the school on compulsory leave.
The demand for an audit report on Starehe regarding its pummeling performance
is really a one sided affair. What of other schools in the country?
In health, most usually focus on the "serious
diseases" and ignore other small conditions that later come to cause other
complications. Putting Starehe on a pedestal has led to other schools being
left out, that little known district school, that provincial school that has
never achieve a "national school" status, that public school that has
never gotten any media attention. The KNEC list for top schools is indeed vital
in creating an environment to allow healthy competition but should not be the
benchmark for academic success.
In the management of patient health care, the focus is never
solely on the "best outcomes" per say but more so on a wholesome
recovery. This means that a good hospital does not talk of the number of
surgeries they churn out on a daily basis but how they are in the business of
saving lives, even if it's just one. When we cross over to education, there is
nothing wrong about being the best school but when the constant craze to top
academic success charts takes precedence over actual learning and lifelong
education of students then we have a problem.
The normal health checklist usually concerns itself with a
comprehensive look at all the health factors that make up a patient with
regards to identification, medical history, dietary
habits, sexual preference, genetic information, psychological profiles,
employment history, assessments of personality and mental state, authorization
for treatment, availability of a health proxy, emotional health, varied state
of body systems, disabilities, physical exams and so on. It is these factors
that are considered in diagnosing a patient's condition and offering a
dependable solution.
Education can borrow a lot from the health industry and
apply a few of these checklist for a more holistic assessment of schools. I
look forward to the day when the mere passing of exams will no longer be the
only benchmark for success. When KNEC will rate the exam results taking into
account how long a school has existed or the academic hoops jumped by different
schools in different areas.
Picture this if you can: a hospital performing a
standardized medical test for every disease, using the same treatment plan for
every health condition, whether its cancer, diabetes, malaria or even HIV. We
would never know which drug works for which disease, it would be a maze.
There is the need to "immunize" schools per say by
putting in policies and frameworks to guide in management of schools and
implementation of learning that works for the students. This is where the
Ministry of Education can hugely assist in salvaging the tattered reputation of
the education sector.
In looking at the problems of schools, it is unsaintly to
vaguely say that all schools face similar problems. In one school the problem
could be poor leadership, in another it could be unqualified teachers, students
not motivated to learn, lack of a sound
"reading culture" yet another school may complain of being in
hardship conditions that do not favour conducive learning, certain parts of
Eastern Kenya as an example.
It is a combination of different elements that make up a
patient's health status so that a health condition is linked to many causal
factors. The nation needs to stop tearing schools in parts and start looking at
how to work in improving academic success in a connective manner of sorts.
We all usually want to simply identify the problem and fix
it hence we tend to treat symptoms instead of the disease.
Let's identify the root problem for poor academic
performance and not simply say: ah, the principal is negligent, lets fire him
and get a new one; students didn't get over 400 in KCPE, next year lets only
admit A+ students; the students don’t like reading, let's make library
attendance mandatory. This will not take us anywhere.
In medicine today, pharmacists are all about creating drugs
that not only address the current issue of concern but also treat linking
factors so that health conditions do not recur.
The place of a patient's medical history cannot be
underplayed so that a doctor is meant to look at where the patient has been so
that they take them to where their health standard ought to be. We need to take
a moment and retrace our steps and identify where the rain started beating us
so that we move the education status of the nation north.
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