We have to fix our education systems, not just the ranking

For East Africa, 2015 seems to have started on a rather sombre note. In Kenya the sad news was that of the sudden death of Fidel Castro Odinga, son to the former Kenyan Prime Minister, Raila Odinga. Here in Rwanda sports fans were also left in total shock when the country’s top tennis star, Jean-Claude Gasigwa collapsed and died during a routine training session. In Burundi clashes between government soldiers and alleged troops near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo left nearly 100 rebels dead after five days of fighting. It appears DRC’s neighbours all have to contend with rebel groups using it as a base to cause mayhem. Speaking of which, the wait for action against the FDLR continues. In Uganda, the mysterious death of Muslim clerics continues to puzzle many people. By the time of writing this some had disappeared after allegedly being kidnapped while others whose lives are said to be in danger were given armed escorts. Uganda had some good news to bite on with the surrender of Lord’s Resistance Army’s ‘Maj Gen’ Dominic Ongwen. Ongwen is believed to be the second in command of Joseph Kony’s rebel group that is known for atrocities in Northern Uganda, parts of DRC and Central African Republic. On the global scene the falling oil prices are something people should watch closely especially since the low prices have far reaching impacts on many economies that produce or intend to produce oil in the near future. A short while back several African countries rebased their GDP using the then high oil and gas prices. With crude oil now at less than $50, more afternoons maybe spent thinking about the implications. I have to point out however, that, I am not an expert on oil or economics. I prefer to stick to topics I am better acquainted with, like education. It appears that Kenya has decided to emulate Rwanda by doing away with the ranking of students and schools using results from the national examinations. It is argued that these rankings tend to create unhealthy competition as schools direct all their resources to helping students pass exams sometimes even applying underhand methods to achieve this. The argument is quite solid but I think it masks the real problems of our education systems. In the first place these moves by Kenya or Rwanda do not take away the choice for private schools to advertise their results so as to woo parents before schools resume. And we should not forget that with students sitting the same exam, there is already competition enough for which they would want bragging rights as a school or individual student. My take would therefore be that instead of focusing on competition at the final exam, we could achieve more by diversifying competition in schools. What if we chose to highlight performance in other different aspects? I would love to see the schools/students bragging about sports exploits, debating skills, arts and music. We need to advance to a level where a student who wishes to develop their singing talent or football talent can easily tell which schools are best suited for this. Schools should be about so much more than the two or three hour exams at the end of the year. Of course some people already know these schools but we could do more to lessen the importance attached to the ‘do or die’ exams. Schools should be about values, knowledge and skills. And a student who attends a school should harvest some of these whether or not they pass the final examination. What does a child pick from school besides the grades from the final exam? The answer to that question is what we should be focusing on. We also need to agree that teachers are key levers of development and therefore deserve decent wages. All over East Africa, the cries of the teachers for more pay can be heard but more often silenced. We also have to develop more relevant curricula to address the current challenges of our people face. Our region is at a crucial stage of development and we cannot blow up the chance by engendering a broken education system. I wish our leaders could treat education related matters with the same level of importance they attach to regional infrastructure projects and politics.

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We have to fix our education systems, not just the ranking