Education reform

It has, as ever, been an interesting day today. I’ve spent most of the time working on our education programme and school development. In common with schools all over the world we are busy comparing test scores with other schools and focusing on ways of making sure that our Standard 8 pupils get the best shot at the public exam at the end of the year. It’s a very challenging project because there are so many things to take into consideration. It is also very rewarding. I’ve been able to work very closely with Madam Nyangwe our head teacher and Mr Isaiah from the Agriculture College and we are definitely growing together as a team.

One of the safest principles to adopt is “sticking with the knitting” – in our case making sure that the children get taught appropriately, using materials suitable for their age and ability. It’s not really rocket science by any stretch of the imagination. We are about to undertake a curriculum review so I thought I’d get a bit of head start by looking at the Standard 1 revision to get a better idea of what is expected from them. This led to an interesting diversion when I discovered that Microsoft Word is able to work out the readability of text that you type into it. (To turn it on click on the spelling and grammar tool, then options and select show readability statistics).  Tonight’s post has a Flesch reading ease rating of 53.3% and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 10.8. This makes it fairly difficult to read and, (optimistically), readable by 50% of adults. I don’t plan to dumb it down any time soon.

This discovery was prompted by the contents of the Standard 1 revision encyclopaedia, in particular the exercises in the Social Studies section. Most of our Standard 1 pupils come from very poor backgrounds. They have just finished in what would be a reception class in England. They are very young. You might like to try these activities with children that you know who are in Year 1.  Questions on the topic of Our School include:

7. Pupils at school go to assembly on _______ and ___________.

8. Name the various people found in your school.

11. What is the work of a prefect in a class? ______________________

13. Why do we have rules at school? _____________________

21. What is the work of a clerk? __________________________

And my favourite

24. _________ is where teacher meet to talk more about school.

It’s always good to have high expectations for pupils !

It’s also good to know that the scourge of cheating in public exams is being dealt with severely. Cheating is notoriously rampant in schools in Kenya. After the public exams in November the newspapers are full of stories about schools and pupils who have managed to find some way of gaining an edge in the exams, (usually by buying a copy of the paper and mark scheme before the pupils sit the exam). On the back page of today’s Daily Nation there was a short report on the government’s latest proposals for anybody caught cheating in public exams. These measures will be discussed and, according to the Nation, ideally come into law in time for this November’s exams. Anyone caught cheating will face a 10 year jail term or a 10 million shilling fine. Now that’s what I call direct action.