The moderation of private schools' results in the 2020 KCPE exam was unfair and seriously damaged the morale of the children in these institutions.
KCPE moderation has been practised for many years now. It is a process in which a learner's marks are reduced or increased by an independent marker to ensure assessment outcomes are within normal distribution of performance.
The process is ideally separate from the marking of assessments and done once all assessments are marked.
With the belief that private schools have better opportunities than their public counterparts, their individual subject marks are reduced to fit into the general range of performance.
However the moderation of private schools' marks in the recently released results was over the top giving a false impression that public schools indeed performed better than their private counterparts.
The 2020 KCPE exam was seriously over moderated resulting in turning the tables on private schools, with public schools suddenly in the top ranks. Nobody saw this coming. Statistically, there cannot be such a sudden change in performance between public and private schools.
In the 2020 KCPE, private schools observed about 20 marks deducted from a single subject, such as mathematics, which extreme. This is honestly unreasonable. None of the learners in private schools had above 80 per cent in mathematics. Similar deductions were made in all other subjects except the languages.
This has resulted in under scoring private school pupils to levels much below those in primary schools. It is therefore a complete fallacy that private schools performed worse than public schools. This does not happen overnight. I am afraid to say that the Ministry of Education misled the nation with this false assertion.
The extraordinary moderation in 2020 was based on a misinformed perception that private schools continued to offer learning during the Covid-19 lockdown last year.
While this assumption could be true to some extent, there were frequent disruptions of connection, absence of teachers and power shortages that adversely affected online learning.
Furthermore, private schools' online learning did not count as per the Education ministry's circular all learners had to repeat the lost terms whether in private or public school.
The fact that private schools realised that they would repeat the lost terms also reduced their motivation for online teaching. It is also important to note that attempts at online learning were not done by all private schools so it was unfair to punish learners with such drastic moderation. Besides, some public schools attempted to offer online classes, albeit a few.
Another issue to consider is the disparities among public schools. A pupil in Hulugho Primary School in Fafi district of Garissa county, for instance, does not enjoy the same privileges as a pupil in a public school in Bungoma. Learners in Fafi were without teachers for more than three years of their eight years in primary school. Teachers fled the terror-prone northern Kenya after a string of attacks.
In northern Kenya schools one teacher covers all the subjects in all classes and in many cases, learners sit the national exam before completing the syllabus. It is therefore sensible that moderation is also done intra-public schools to level the playground. The performance gap among public schools is wide and similarly requires extra attention.
It is in this view that the Ministry of Education must extensively review the modalities for moderation, whether it is between private and public schools or among public schools. Failure to use sound methodology of moderation will result in unfair grading for learners in private schools and underprivileged public schools, beating the logic of standardisation in the first place. Eventually, parents will have no other option but to seek legal redress.
