Despite Knec’s rush, we recorded ‘great’ success in KCPE

When the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), in its long overdue wisdom, appointed me the HM of this school, replacing Bensouda, it must have considered my internationally recognised, locally appreciated and pedagogically superior abilities.

If you remember, I vowed to transform this school from the mess that Bensouda had created to a 21st century wonder.

The first thing I did was to draft an award-winning vision, mission and motto for the school; something that Bensouda, and those who came before her, had never even thought about. Just to remind you, these were:

School Vision: Strong to Serve

School Motto: Natulengee Juu Zaidi

Mission Statement: Mwisho wa Lami School, The Place to Be

Underlying the school’s strategic redirection was its performance. As you know, by the time Bensouda left, it was already second term. An average HM would have said that it was too late to make any changes in KCPE, but I am not an average HM. 

Last year, the school had a KCPE mean score of just above 180 marks, and I was deliberate about improving this. To this end, I changed the school’s timetables, swapped teachers to have renewed focus on the examination class and introduced morning, lunch time and evening preps for class eight.

In third term, for the first time ever, we bought benchmark KCPE examinations and after a long time participated in the sub-county mock examinations. I know we were second last in the mock, but for us, the fact that we had participated after many years was a big plus. Had Bensouda been the HM that would never have happened.

I also invited two former students to speak to the candidates. The first one was Sandra, the wife of Tito, the owner of Busy Bee Academy. The other one was the most successful student from this school after me: Jeremiah, a senior driver at Msamaria Mwema.

Despite not being academically gifted, Jeremiah had grown from being a tout to be a conductor then a junior driver, to driver and now senior driver, all in less than 20 years, a rare feat. The two encouraged the students to work hard.

Lastly, I invited Rev Apostle Elkana to offer special prayers to the candidates, including administering anointing oil. With all this, we looked forward to record-breaking performance in KCPE, with a man score of above 200.

I expected the Kenya National Examinations Council to take time to mark the examination. We had taken eight years preparing the students and we expected credible, verifiable and proper examination results. To produce such results, I expected the results to be released somewhere around April.

I was at Hitler’s last Tuesday when I received news that KCPE had been released. It was Rasto, whom I kicked out of the BOM of the school, who showed us an SMS indicating that his grandson had got 214 marks. The grandson was repeating after he garnered 207 marks last years.

“We took the boy back to repeat so he can score over 250 marks, but the change of school management affected him,” he said.

Nyayo asked him to explain school changes and he said that since Bensouda had left, academic focus had gone down.

“But he got 207 marks under Bensouda so how come,” wondered Alphayo.

Anyway, we started checking our candidates results via SMS. I must say that the results we were receiving were not so exciting, but this was not surprising given the hurry with which KNEC handled the exams. It was no wonder that in Mathematics and Science, most students had scored similar marks.

Even with that, we recorded great success compared with previous years. There were so many positives but I would like to mention just a few of them.

100 per cent transition: For the first time in the history of our school, all the candidates will proceed to secondary school due the solid performance. It will always be remembered that that happened, for the first time, during my reign

Minimum marks: Although we are yet to check all the students’ results, for the first time ever, so far, we have no student with less than 83 total marks. If this stands, I will have set another record.

100 per cent attendance: For the first time since this school was started, all the candidates sat for the final exams. Even the girl who got married last October and another who got a baby in January came and sat KCPE. Under previous HMs, there was always a student or two who, for one reason or another, did not take KCPE. I changed this.

Over 200 marks: Based on SMS results we have so far, more than six students have over 200 marks. This is new record. If Bensouda was still here, those with above 200 would have been, as usual, just about four.

There are those who have been asking for our mean score and how it compares with last year’s. As a pedagogist, academician, and senior educationist, I say to them that mean score has never been a good measure of performance. It is always important to look at the bigger picture, like the improvements I have highlighted above. Even if we were to use mean scores, I can tell you that had Bensouda continued to be the HM, it could have been worse!

Finally, I need to remind everyone that I picked this school in second term. The children have had Bensouda as HM all their schooling life here. Therefore, those were Bensouda’s results, except for the improvements above that are mine. I will only take full responsibility of KCPE results from 2024 onwards!

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