As the national examination season starts, many students and parents are gripped with anxiety over the results and how life turn out to be.
Students who are gifted academically get all the attention and hope for a bright future.
But those struggling in class and fail to get a passing grade face tumultuous time, less attention and are lucky to get a chance in life, if they don’t fall through the cracks.
Professor Karega Mutahi, 77, is an example of a struggling student who repeated classes in primary school and could not join secondary school as his parents were too poor.
When he sat his Certificate of Primary Education in 1963, he scored A in English, B in Mathematics and D in general paper.
Then Education PS during President Mwai Kibaki’s regime died this week.
Challenges hardened him and inspired him to work harder.
“I never went to any high school.In fact, in primary school, I had to repeat Class 7,” Mutahi said during a media interview in 2010.
“I am here out of my determination. I cannot be bullied,” he once told his aides when teachers’ union bosses criticised him over free education funds.
But failure to join secondary school did not bar him from advancing his education.
He went on and trained as a P3 teacher, enrolled for O levels and eventually became a professor of linguistics, a long serving principal secretary and a respected public administrator.
After primary, Mutahi worked as an untrained teacher at Kiru Primary School.
Kigari Teachers’ Training College later trained him as a P3 teacher.
After graduating from Kigari Teachers College, he privately studied for Kenya Junior Secondary Education, before sitting for his O levels as a private candidate in 1967, scoring a second division.
He wrote his A levels later, scoring one principle and two subsidiaries.
Mutahi then joined the University of Nairobi in 1973 to pursue BA in Linguistics and political science.
He later proceeded to the University of California in Los Angeles for masters in linguistics.
In 1978, he reached the pinnacle of his academic journey and earned a PhD in linguistics from the University of Nairobi.
The former university don and researcher has 19 publications to his name, 29 papers and countless awards locally and abroad.
“I often tell my students that what you score does not define you. The problem is that they tend to let the scores define them and forfeit their future,” Mutahi said.
All Saints Cathedral provost Evans Omollo announced his death on October 27, asking congregants to pray for his family.