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Over 1.8 million candidates will this week start their Grade Six (KPSEA) and Form Four (KCSE) national examinations. This offers parents, guardians, teachers and other education stakeholders an opportunity to rethink the relevance of education — and examinations — in the lives of Kenyan youth.

In the past, exams were a race to sieve out learners and determine who proceeded to the next level and who fell by the wayside. That has been changing over time, with the government insisting on 100 percent transition from primary to secondary levels. This is important because a basic education, lasting at least 12 years, gives young people the foundation they need to become functionally literate and puts them in a position to advance themselves and their families economically.

This is what distinguishes developed from developing economies. Developed economies understand that education ought to prepare individuals to solve the challenges that they encounter day to day by equipping them with critical thinking and problem-solving skills. In developing nations, by contrast, examinations are treated as sprints to gauge who becomes first to cross the finish line. This negates the purpose of education because the first-past-the-post candidates are not always the best at problem-solving after school. This is what we need to remedy if we are to unleash the full potential of Kenya’s youth to become drivers of change, innovators at work and wealth creators.

With the exponential growth of technical and vocational colleges (TVCs), young people have now been offered an additional opportunity to study for a craft that has potential to dramatically improve their capacity to generate incomes and to lift themselves and their families from the pits of poverty. This is especially so in rural areas where opportunities are limited. With guidance, however, it is possible to educate young people, for instance, that land as a factor of production does not just have to be used for crop farming. One can use land, say, to start a hospitality business, especially in scenic rural areas where such establishments are in short supply.

For this to happen, there is also a need for lenders and investors to partner with TVCs in identifying young people with brilliant ideas that can be funded or scaled so that creativity, innovation and hard work are adequately nurtured and rewarded. Examples abound to demonstrate that with the right leadership at local levels, creative candidates — not necessarily those who top in class — can be mentored to exploit their talents in entrepreneurship and other undertakings that can create wealth, value and jobs.

In the same way, the national examinations should serve as a reminder that writing the papers is not a race to determine who gets the highest scores or who is better or worse than the rest in their class. Rather, they should serve as an opportunity to unleash the creativity of the youth so that they can try out new ideas which can, in turn, make them self-sufficient whether they are employed or become job creators.

One other important thing is that teachers, guardians and policymakers should strive to help the youth make the connection between theory and practice. When some of us were growing up, we were taught how soap was made. However, we were not taught that we could make soap for sale, meaning that we lost out on a crucial aspect of the purpose of education, which is to help individuals make money by solving a problem. Because of this, we could very well answer questions about the process of making soap but were blindsided from connecting the dots that would lead us to actually doing it.

With the coming of the Competency-Based Curriculum in schools and the Competency-Based Education and Training in technical colleges, young people now have an opportunity to make this critical connection that can, in turn, make them wealth and value creators and entrepreneurs, not just job seekers.

And in as much as we wish all candidates success in their examinations, we should remind them — and ourselves — that sitting exams is not a do-or-die undertaking. Rather, it is a tool to help them, and their guardians, assess their strengths and skills so that they can focus on honing them when they graduate into the next stage of learning or venture into the world of work.

— The writer is the Editor-in-Chief of the Nairobi Law Monthly and Nairobi Business Monthly; [email protected]