Exclusionist advertising fuels cheating
Exam cheating is yet to be eradicated
The ban on school ranking in national examinations is one of the key policies for which the Ministry of Education has won praise and criticism in equal measure.
But the reported irregularities in the recent KCPE and KCSE exams waters down the feat and makes a mockery of the country’s success in the campaign against cheating in exams.
With the ban, the government had hoped to stem unhealthy competition among schools that often led to underhand deals in pursuit of ‘excellence’. It made a huge leap towards restoring the integrity of national exams.
The education sector had seen commercialisation of national exams into a lucrative business that raked in tens of millions of shillings yearly for unscrupulous peddlers of leaked and fake test papers.
Sadly, exam cheating is yet to be eradicated. Exam papers are still smuggled, especially using mobile telephony, with questions transmitted to buyers via social media platforms.
Exclusionist ranking
Official institutional ranking is dead. However, it’s ‘heir’—the culture of advertising individual results of ‘best’ performers—thrives. That is the new face of exclusionist ranking, where only top candidates are celebrated with pomp and grandeur.
It is not unusual to see institutional adverts replete with pictures of minors displaying ‘good’ performance of their candidates.
Don’t we see the cause and effect of this on the cyclical exam cheating? Given that our society honours winners, even dubious ones, our children don’t like to lose either. They want a portion of the celebrity pie they see in the media.
The sneaky ads can be exclusionist, or unethical, as it fetes only ‘the best’. Some minors sitting the exams could be pressured to take shortcuts in pursuit of the elusive ‘celebrity status’—and therein lies the dragon of a cheating mindset!
To protect minors from unhealthy competition and undue pressure, the ministry should come up with an equitable way of displaying exam outcomes—for instance, by packaging results and making them available on its website for the candidates to easily access free of charge.
Mr Wagunda is a communications lecturer at Rongo University. [email protected].
