2.0. Statement of The Problem

When KCPE and KCSE examinations results under 8-4-4 system were released, high
performing students would talk about which schools they hoped to join, for KCPE top
performers while for KCSE top performers, they were asked what they hoped to pursue in future
and one heard them mention medicine, engineering, law, and such like. What many Kenyans did
not know is that some of them dropped out of the top schools they selected while those joining
university on such fake grades could not manage and were forced to repeat or discontinued due
to poor performance. Some were clever to change to less demanding and less prestigious degrees
and survived.
The trend of massaging KCPE and KCSE examination results was dangerous and was
killing Kenya’s education system until Fred Mataing’i and George Magoha arrived on the scene
and instilled sense of honesty and integrity in the examination outcomes which saw the steady
decline in performance of so-called top schools or giants many of which tumbled as a result of
being locked out of leaked examination questions. There were scandals reported all over in
schools previously regarded as pristine and prestigious, with reports of extreme bullying and
sodomy reported at Alliance Boys and Maseno School which led to the departure of famous
principals. Some scholars argue that the obsession with examination results in Kenya and its
negative attendant attributes has been worrying to the extent that when Kenyans were told that
the grade 3 pupils under the new Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) would be assessed
nationally, it raised an unnecessary anxiety among many parents (Amutabi, 2003; Sifuna, 1990).
Many studies have been carried out in countries that have implemented CBC and although the
results on its performance have been mixed, there is evidence to suggest that it is better than
exam based curriculum such as the 8-4-4 system in Kenya. These are the issues that this article
examines and provides suggestions on way forward and recommendations for policy makers.
2.0. Statement of the Problem

There are serious concerns on poor performance of the examination oriented 8-4-4 system of
education where leaking of exams and massaging of grades has become the order of the day. The
problem of leaking exams to candidates undermined the examination process and was taking
Kenya’s education system down the drain until Fred Matiang’i and George Magoha arrived and
made many changes that minimized cheating in examinations in Kenya. Admissions that parents
and schools bought examination papers from KNEC officials ahead of scheduled national exams
undermined the faith of Kenyans in the national examinations. There is hope and potential that
the 2-6-3-3 may provide opportunity to correct the errors made by the 8-4-4 system in which
those not making certain grades were locked out of the next system. The many alternative tracks
and avenues created in the 2-6-3-3 system is likely to address the issue of repeating, wastage,
drop out and attrition.
There has been rampant cheating through registration of candidates from academies in
urban areas in rural public schools. Many of them have ended up in prestigious national schools
and in the process taking the spaces from poor rural students and undermining the accuracy of
gauging performance in public schools. The candidates who are sneaked in also affect the
gauging of performance in such schools because they inflate performance and also artificially
1
Copyright © 2019 African Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ASREA), Nairobi, Kenya
http://www.jopea.org/index.php/current-issue
Journal of Popular Education in Africa
October, November & December 2019, Volume 3, Number 10, 11 & 12
ISSN 2523-2800 (online)
Citation: Amutabi, M. N. (2019). Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) and the end of an Era in Kenya’s
Education Sector and Implications for Development: Some Empirical Reflections. Journal of Popular Education in
Africa. 3(10), 45 – 66.
increase the cut off points for selection in national and other prestigious schools. The end result
is that yearly, KNEC reports that about 10,000 candidates miss to sit KCPE exams without
understanding that these are pupils who were are part of double registration syndicate and which
is hard to detect. The suggestion of allocating learners specific numbers at entry in order to deter
the cheats may not work because they will obtain two numbers in order to circumvent the
system. CBC at university level will promote institutions of higher learning to become true
innovators and produce unique engineers, doctors and scientists in different fields and may not
need to be regulated by traditional regulatory bodies that may not have expertise in the unique
areas of innovation. It is only when institutions become autonomous that they are able to think
outside the box. This is the case in counties where CBC has been implemented in some form
such as Canada, Finland, United States, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, the Netherlands,
Norway, New Zealand and Sweden. Kenya needs to embrace examples found in these countries
and get out of rigid colonial-type inspections and regulations on learning.
There is an alarming rate of failure of candidates who join courses such as medicine,
architecture and engineering at universities in Kenya many of whom end up being discontinued.
There is also evidence of massive cheating in university examinations through use of
‘mwakenya’ (answers sneaked into examination rooms) in universities in Kenya largely due to
the bad culture acquired by these learners in primary and secondary schools. The cheating
students eventually pass and proceed to masters where they engage in plagiarism during writing
of theses and dissertations and this is where the bigger problem lies because it is affecting quality
of learning and research at the university because these weak individuals end up as lecturers and
enter lecture rooms with cut and paste notes from Wikipedia and other nonacademic sources.
They cannot make sense out of journal articles and university-level textbooks. The contention
has been that the system generated graduates who were so dependent on examination results to
the point of avoiding learning and mastering content, hence the need for CBC.
Parents and other stakeholders have been part of the cheating system by seeking short
cuts in the progress of their children to proceed to university and are willing to do anything to
make this possible. Parents are willing to pay any amount to ensure that their children join
national schools and are selected for good courses at the university. The parents and principals
forgot about virtues and character development which leads to spoilt children many of whom are
burning schools and causing strikes in colleges and universities due to the decay of the moral
fabric in the country where students know that majority seem to be where they are through
cheating. Such students are known to look for relevant staff in examination offices at universities
and offer bribes to have their grades changed in the system by corrupt staff. These are serious
issues which one hopes that the introduction of CBC will address because joining high school
and university will be based on abilities and interest rather than the artificial environment which
the Kenyan education system has been creating. There is need to ensure that the education sector
provides a level playing field for all regardless of class, ethnicity, region and gender in order to
develop all citizens holistically.
2
Copyright © 2019 African Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ASREA), Nairobi, Kenya
http://www.jopea.org/index.php/current-issue
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