Amid the celebratory mood following the recently released results of the 2019 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination is a report that some 5,530 registered candidates did not sit it.
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha made the revelation when he released the results at the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) headquarters.
Though this number is lower than last year’s, it still is too high to be ignored. Failure by pupils to sit an exam is an indication that they are dropping out of the education system prematurely.
Such failure to complete an educational level and attain the relevant certification amounts to a colossal waste of government and individual resources invested in education.
It also signifies unfulfilled aims, goals and objectives for the individual, community and the nation.
Whereas various reasons have been given as to why candidates register but fail to show up for exams, these are not clearly established for each candidate and are, therefore, based on assumption and generalisation.
For instance, it is assumed that the 195 candidates who failed to sit this year’s KCPE in correctional facilities, where they were registered, may have been released before the exam began and did not wish to return to the prison environment to sit them.
But this assumption may not be true for all such candidates.
Among the other reasons often given to explain why registered candidates miss exams are teenage pregnancies and early marriages, insecurity, environmental factors, outright truancy, sickness and, unfortunately in some cases, death of a candidate before the exam.
However, the Ministry of Education, through its relevant agencies, should seek to account for each one of the thousands of registered candidates who did not sit KCPE this year.
It is not enough to make sweeping generalisations about all of these candidates.
Rather, credible information should be sought from the exam centres that registered these candidates to establish why they did not sit the exam.
Heads of schools and other exam centres should be tasked to liaise with all the relevant stakeholders, including the candidates’ families, to establish the specific, factual reasons for each and every student missing the exam.
An analysis of this information should then be done to sift fact from assumptions.
It is only by doing this that the ministry and other relevant government agencies can come up with realistic measures, policies and support systems to mitigate against candidates failing to sit national exams after registering for them.
Dr Emily Nyabisi, director, Mount Kenya University, Nakuru campus
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