We forgot to fete a category of special KCSE performers

When we celebrated top performers in the 2020 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination (KSCE), we lauded new stars — mainly little-known schools — many strewn in far-flung and little-heard of places. The sensation was day schools, which had outperformed serial giants.

There was also the usual comparison of big national schools and other regular stars. But in the heavily publicised affair, special category institutions that more than churn out winners were forgotten. One such institution is Starehe Boys Centre. 

A serial top performer, Starehe is not your ordinary institution. The altruistic philosophy that drives Starehe makes it special: It gives a chance to many otherwise deserving boys who cannot afford fees to nurture their academic prowess. It’s at this anvil of education that destinies and fortunes hitherto unimagined are honed, reimagined and negotiated — a fact many a Starehe beneficiary will attest.

In the latest KCSE, Starehe boys was 17th. Of its 262 candidates, eight scored A, 68 A-, 72 B+, 54 B, 23 B- and 25 C+. Only 12 students scored C to D+ — meaning that a whopping 250 students, or 95 per cent, from Starehe qualified to join public universities.

Its mean score of 9.4313, from 8.9098 in 2019 and 8.7344 in 2018, shows Starehe, a refuge for the potentially dispossessed and hopeless, is on the rebound. This path of excellence for a school that is as good as a rescue centre should be extoled and rewarded.

Starehe admits many gifted boys from humble backgrounds who end up being inducted into a culture of hard work and service to humanity. More often than not, destitution robs human beings of their confidence, making it difficult for them to claim their place in the universe. Privation also predisposes one to mockery and ridicule from the endowed.

Starehe has no equal

Though burdened by untold downsides, Starehe has developed the capacity to rebuild not just the confidence of such boys but also their fortunes through quality education in a caring environment.

Given the extremely diverse socioeconomic backgrounds profile of Starehians, the boys who pull themselves by the bootstraps to become high-flyers on the national are real celebrities. Theirs is a story of building something from nothing.

Most remarkable is that Starehe is bouncing back to the national limelight against a stack of odds. One is when students lost their study materials to the fire that razed the Form Four block in February last year. As if to rub salt on a festering wound, schools were closed the following month due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, the boys, most of whom retreated to menial jobs back home without internet and, therefore, access to online learning to aid their revision, still went on to record good performance.

KSCE performance should be more than a contest among schools. Our ideology of schooling should aim at providing the means to the deprived to increase opportunities for them through education.

As a sanctuary for those who run the risk of joining the league of the forgotten, Starehe has no equal. It deserves an honourable mention among its peers.

Mr Wehliye, an old boy of Starehe Boys Centre, is a member of its management committee. @Wehliyemohamed