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Results of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exam are out, with the routine gushing praise of the usual perennially dominant schools — the so-called national schools.

This bunch of national schools dominating exams is now all too familiar, which they attribute to hard work, discipline, prayers etc. This answer is now cliche.

Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, no excellence will be wrought without these attributes.

However, there is something more fundamental that keeps these schools dominant, and which has distorted the education system in Kenya by creating an elite and privileged group of schools, whose continued top ranking is based on a process that discriminates against the rest of Kenyan children.

This discriminatory process will forever perpetuate this elitism, with zero hope for others to rise to the top, irrespective of what they do.

For some reason which defies logic, a certain set of schools have for decades been allowed to jump the queue and exclusively select the top performers from primary schools.

At KCSE, these schools are hailed as models of hard work for defeating other schools who had to make do with fighting for what the national schools rejected as not worthy of their institutions.

Question is, would the national schools achieve the same excellence if they had to constitute classes that more faithfully reflected the performance of the country in Class Eight?

The never acknowledged truth is, it is impossible for other schools to compete with national schools.

This has created an elite system where schools are, by institutional establishment, designed to forever dominate exams with very adverse effects on competitors’ entry to universities and the professions, morale and the whole future of students who don’t make it to the elite schools.

Further, this system has conspired, however, inadvertently, to consign the brightest from marginalised areas to never setting foot into Kenya’s best schools.

Students who score 200 marks in places like Wajir are as bright as those achieving 400 marks in much better resourced and equipped schools.

Difficult questions need to be asked. This system has distorted the mindset of education, and has skewed resources, policies and focus. 

The entire lower education system is sorely focussed on getting students to pass through the eye of the needle, and get into national schools.

It has engendered a destructive ecosystem, where learning countrywide has been relegated to this one obsession.

That 1.2 per cent of the 10,487 secondary schools in Kenya are given preference over others to pick the top one per cent of students, yet they are competing in the same exams, for the same limited opportunities in universities and other tertiary institutions, is unconscionable.

The government undertook some reforms by increasing the national schools from 18 to 103 in 2014.

But nothing changed in reality. The 18 original nationals schools continue to dominate selection of top students and, consequently, KCSE exams. That reform effort failed.

Alumni of such schools dominate the top echelons of the country’s body politic, while graduates from other most other schools have zero hope of ever ascending anywhere. This is not good for national unity.

This officially sanctioned discrimination has no place in modern Kenya, a country which has one of the most progressive constitutions globally in terms of egalitarianism. It is wrong. And it needs urgent reform. 

When a more equitable system is in place, results from these elite schools will more accurately reflect the efforts those principals and teachers put in.

If they can then guide such a class into a dominant performance in KCSE, they can then be truly celebrated as heroes.

The new Competency-Based Curriculum system is de-emphasising a single exam as the kitchen sink drain through which passage the future of students is determined.

This presents CS for Education George Magoha, a great opportunity to revisit the stillborn 2014 reform of this system. Magoha, who has the vision and gravitas to undertake this reform, is just the man for the job.    —  [email protected]