[kictanet] Education and Our Future

Fri Oct 5 21:42:42 EAT 2012

@ Mwangi,

I agree with you - JAB should be abolished or its role redefined. A year ago, I went to pick my son after his final KSCE paper and was drawn towards the school’s notice board, where he and other students were busy going through the longest list of courses offered by public universities in Kenya. The school had asked them to pick whichever courses matched their ‘expected’ grade. I saw boys select courses based on the ‘big’ titles e.g. anthropology – without any idea what the courses entail!

I believe the problem is lack of career guidance in our schools. In a recent conference on Careers & Mentorship, ‘appointed’ career teachers expressed their frustrations at the lack of resources to guide the students. They feel overwhelmed and frustrated, especially because they do not have the right information to guide the students as expected. In one rural school, for example, the career teacher asked the Form 2 students to go home and agree with their parents what subjects to pick/drop at Form 3! My question is, how does a school expect a semi-literate parent in rural Kenya to guide their children on subject choices?

We need to learn from what Canada and the US are doing. Over 15 years ago, schools introduced games that stimulate the imagination of students by exploring their dreams about future lifestyles. Students are assisted to draw job profiles based on their dreams and learn why educational achievement is necessary to reach that position. By playing these games, students are able to relate their school experience to career choices, learn to make informed learning and life choices, discover personal skills and talents, relate learning to earning etc.

Anyone interested in learning more about these tools, please contact me directly.

Esther  

From: kictanet [mailto:kictanet-bounces+emuchiri=andestbites.com at lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of william janak
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2012 7:58 PM
To: emuchiri at andestbites.com
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Education and Our Future

True. Learning should be pleasurable. Now it is stressful, unnecessarily competitive and commercialized.

Oloo Janak.

  _____  

From: "bitange at jambo.co.ke" <bitange at jambo.co.ke>
To: williamjanak at yahoo.com 
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> 
Sent: Friday, October 5, 2012 6:13 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Education and Our Future

We must move away from offering exams once a year to two or three times a year. This will enable fast learners to finish, move on and leave space for more learners. Further, examinations should never be a government core activity. This is why we have too many people with certificates but cannot help themselves.

Learning is supposed to be pleasurable such that we can identify talent and nurture it. We have for example doctors without passion or ability but we continue to admit students to medical schools based on grades. 

We should never attempt to control education in any way. As Robinson says, children are not goods with sale by date. Learning is a process. Whether it takes you 12 years or 15 years to finish high school, it does not matter. What matters is whether you like what you are doing.

Since we have IT availability throughout the country, we should start continuous assessment such that the final exam will constitute only 40%. This effectively will emasculate thousands of young girls who fall through the cracks simply because they are able to afford sanitary towels and stay in school.

Ndemo.

Sent from my BlackBerry®

  _____  

From: Phares Kariuki <pkariuki at gmail.com> 

Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 17:41:38 +0300

To: <bitange at jambo.co.ke>

Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions<kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>

Subject: Re: [kictanet] Education and Our Future

I agree... Though what's really worrying at this point is the education bill, that's aiming to control private schools. 

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 5:44 PM, <bitange at jambo.co.ke> wrote:

Ken Robinson says that schools have killed creativity.  From the recent
Kenya Union of Teachers’ (KNUT) strike it was evident that we are lacking
in creativity.  Three weeks of strike threatened the effectiveness of the
Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) like never before.  Why is KNEC
linked to KNUT?

In 2010 GCSE candidates took their exam towards the end June and the
results were out by August.  More than 700,000 students worldwide did
mathematics and English while other subjects averaged more than 350,000
candidates.  At the same time about 360,000 sat for the KCSE in the same
year between October and November but the results came out at the end of
February.  In other words marking our exams took twice as much as it took
the Pearson’s Group (a private entity) to mark GCSE.

GCSE exams are marked by retired teachers as well as other qualified
people.  It is a contract for which you are paid 800 pounds for the three
to four weeks exercise.  They heavily use IT to process the exams and some
papers are marked by computers.

The company offers a variety of qualifications, including A Levels (GCEs),
Edexel (which is one of England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s five main
examination boards and the BTEC suit of examination qualifications. It
also offers work-based learning qualifications – including BTEC
Apprenticeships through Pearson Work Based Learning, awarding over 1.5
million certificates to students around the world every year.
Since we benchmark on everything, is it not time we started to benchmark
on our education?

Ndemo.

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KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

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