Kitui county KCSE results: A commentary

Looking at Kitui county KCSE results can be a depressing affair. You find a few – typically less than 2,000 students – scoring truly good grades – between A and B+. The sorts of grades that can get the students admitted to university for competitive courses in fields like medicine, law and engineering. Then you have another like 3,000-5000 with decent grades, between B plain and C+. The numbers increase somewhat for weaker but decent grades, like those in the C plain to D+ range. But majority of the students end up failing, with D plain, D- and E. To be fair, this is not a Kitui county thing, but rather a national thing. Yet when you get a chance to interact with the Kitui county students who score those poor grades (D plain, D- Minutes and E) you realize that they are actually not stupid chaps/ladies. They are reasonably intelligent kids, who have been ‘wasted’ by the system.

Most of the kids who get such poor grades tend to be individuals who lack motivation. So you find that those who get As and Bs are not necessarily more intelligent. They just happen to be more motivated to learn. And those who fail are not necessarily stupid, but just lack the motivation to learn. That is why you will find a kid somewhere in Mutha or Tyaa Kamuthanga who knows all players in Chelsea and Manchester United and Manchester City by heart. Yet he can’t apply the same brain to know all the chemicals in the periodic table. The same brain that can master all players in Chelsea can surely master the elements in the periodic table but what the kid lacks is motivation. Many of these kids come from dysfunctional families, where too much strictness has bred a pathological rebellion in them which sees them not exerting themselves fully in their studies...

There is of course also the fact that those day schools in the interior are not very well equipped and some lack adequate numbers of qualified teachers. And the kids lack role-models, as in, they don’t know the end they are working hard at school towards. They don't know how much difference it makes to be a doctor rather than a clinical officer. Or how much difference it makes to join the army as a cadet rather than a recruit. They are not exposed to such things. 
And then there is also the feeling in some quarters that the KCSE exam is simply too hard for the kids, hence the dismal performance countrywide. You can’t dismiss these sentiments when you look at the sorts of questions kids are expected to answer in KCSE – especially when you consider kids in farflung corners of Kitui who lack exposure.  So you find that the KCSE is not just a general education examination, but also a pre-university exam that is too taxing on average minds.