Aiming high

On Tuesday our oldest pupils will start their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education, (KCPE), exams. The exams last for three days and will be conducted under the most stringent security conditions to avoid cheating. None of the teachers except the head teacher will be allowed on the school compound. All the pupils except the members of class 8 will be at home for the duration of the exam period. Mobile phones within earshot of the exam room will be confiscated and I am sure that someone told me a policeman will be in attendance as well. It would not surprise me.

Our ‘candidates', (as they are now called), must be the best-prepared group of students I have seen. They have been drilled since at least August and have sat three mock exams in the last four weeks. I’m actually very proud of them. One of the mock exams they sat recently was the divisional mock. Our school came 13th out of the 131 schools in our division. We came 2nd out of the 22 schools in our zone. Out of 3649 candidates our top pupil, Kevin, came 3rd in English. He came 85th overall, (he is our only pupil in the top 100), with a score of 395 – 5 more marks would gain him admittance to a prestigious National High school. The results are encouraging and show improvements in maths. We can do better in future but are heading in the right direction. We are top school in English in our zone and 4th out of 131 in the Division at English. If this sounds a bit like boasting I suppose it is but I think the pupils and their teachers deserve a pat on the back.

The candidates have also been well prayed for. There was a day of prayer in Kosele, (our local village), on Thursday that was attended by many local schools. The other pupils in the school prayed with them on Friday and our church prayed for them today. This might seem like spiritual overkill but it is very encouraging to see that the spiritual dimension of our young people’s live is taken so seriously. The KCPE exam is a very big deal in Kenya and is a significant transition point for all of the young people taking it. Despite the possibility of cheating and corruption the marks will be eagerly anticipated and will feature prominently in the national press when they are released. Asking for God’s favour at such a time is the right thing to do. It seems to have been done very well.

Tomorrow, in addition to checking that all the final preparations have been made for the smooth running of the KCPE exams, I will be working on a cunning plan to spend some time with the teaching staff. Assuming the teachers will actually be allowed onto our compound at all, it should be a good opportunity for us to prepare for dominating all the exam performance tables next year. I hope we don’t have to resort to an excessive amount of subterfuge to ensure our meetings can take place. It will be difficult to disguise the fact that the teachers have arrived for work. Our compound is not very big and the teachers tend to be quite well dressed. Disguising them as a group of itinerant labourers come to erect fencing would be a bit of a challenge. I am hoping that sanity will prevail and that it will be possible for us to work in peace, without disturbing the sanctity of the exam area or incurring the wrath of the police officer. The police in Kenya are usually armed. We will need to be careful in our discussions about aiming high.