By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

22 February 2015

It is now clear to me that, all things considered, the method applied by the Ministry of Education in assigning pupils to various secondary schools is fair. But there is still a large number of disappointed people. So we must seek ways to improve the process.

I think there are three problems to be dealt with. First, many teachers, parents and pupils do not understand how the selection is done. Secondly, the restrictions on the number of schools that a candidate can choose are not appropriate for the present situation on the ground. Thirdly, the relevant information that can help in making wise choices is not available.

The first problem is easy. The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) should give every candidate a flier explaining, in simple language, how the school assignment is done – not the Greek-Arabic-Chinese English version available in the Ministry of Education website!

On the second problem, candidates are currently allowed a total eight choices comprising of the following: four national schools, one in the extra-county, two county schools and one sub-county.

Because of the high level of demand for national schools, it is unlikely that any candidate is admitted to his/her second choice.  Therefore, allowing four choices in this category is a waste!

I would suggest that the choices be changed as follows: two national schools, two county schools from outside the candidate’s county, two county schools from the candidate’s county and two sub-county schools from the candidate’s sub-county. This would give the candidates greater flexibility and also ensure that the choices are wasted.

The third problem is made worse by the fact that the Ministry of Education has stopped ranking schools according to exam scores. However, as any parent will agree, exam performance is not the only factor that goes into choosing a school for your child.

Nevertheless, the most important information required to make wise choices is the level of demand for each secondary school. That is, how many people chose it as first-choice, second-choice, etc. last year? In addition to this, it would also help to know, out those who chose it, how many were offered places and how many took up the offers.

That might sound like too much to ask but all the data is available at KNEC and it can be printed in a simple table – the same table that has the school index numbers. It might also sound like too much information to digest, but, when you have a child in class 8, you will take it in like a sponge in water!

With that information, the wise choice would be to select a more competitive school first and then a less competitive one second. That way, a candidate will have a good chance of getting admission to the preferred school.

The one question that must be answered is whether national schools are actually better than the others. That is, do children get better learning opportunities in these schools than in county and sub-county ones? Or do they produce better results because they admit only the cleverest students?