By Peter Amunga.
A stamp on all the reopening exam papers being sat in all schools in Kenya, shows that World Bank and other donors are funding. There are KNEC set evaluations and testings ongoing in class 4 and 8, that started on 21st October.
Then we ask, Why is the ministry relactant in releasing those donor funds to public schools for the purposes of downloading, photographing, making copies, administering and grading of the tests?? ; … YET WORLD BANK HAS CATERED FOR IT?
Is someone eating that money?
Kenya National Examinations council has released the exam to schools via online platforms. Interestingly Ministry of Education is incuring almost zero expenses on the same. It has delegated the responcibility of production and administering of the exam to schools. We all know the state of our public schools after the covid pandemic. It is pathetic. Why add them more miseries?
This is hitting public schools very hard because exams are a very expensive excercise. For example, at a school like Bungoma DEB there are approximately 500 candidates in Standard 8.
Here is a breakdown of what it costs.
- The Maths exam has 20 pages. So it is 20 pages x ksh40 for downloading in a cyber cafe for the rural school. = 800
- Each of the 500 kids will get a the 20 page doc × ksh 5 as photocopying.
500× 20 × 5 = 50,000 - Standard 8 have 4 subjects. That is
50,000 × 4 = 200,000 - Administrative charges and logistics eg Transport, refreshments, stationery, tea etc
3 days × 5000 = 15,000.
GRAND TOTAL = 265,800
That is the budget of administering the current ongoing exam at Bungoma DEB Primary. It could be higher in some schools or lower.. The question is. Who is footing that bill? Kenya has over 50,000 schools. If you tabulet the cost that each school will use to administer the test it will be in billions.
CONCLUSION
World bank has provided funds. Kindly Magoha save our children learning in public schools by releasing the money to schools for the purposes it was meant for. Please, Do NOT ALLOW the Ministry of Education to get the name of Covid Millionares or Jogoo house to be renamed MAFIA HOUSE.
