Ranking of schools in national examinations’ performances should be reinstated because the scrapping stifled appreciation and rewarding of excellence among learners, Manyatta MP. Mr. Gitonga Mukunji
The legislator insisted that despite the apparent removal of the ranking in the public eye, it was certain that the Ministry of Education confidentially prepared such data for analysis to ensure remedial measures when failures arose.
Speaking at Kangaru School during the inaugural Manyatta Constituency Education and Career Mentorship Day, Mukunji vowed that ranking would continue in his constituency’s schools to facilitate appreciation of the best performers, reward excellence and improve education standards.
The MP said that he supported competition between students and schools adding reverting to ranking would ensure a return of competition and excellence.
“I support competition and the return of the spirit of competition which can only be achieved through ranking’’, said Mukunji.
Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu disclosed that some 2403 candidates in the last year’s KCSE qualified for university placement after attaining the mandatory grade C+ and above.
Although grading was scrapped organizations such as Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Services (KUCCPS) have data on all results and cannot escape regional comparisons when it comes to access to placement for degree, diploma, craft, and artisanal courses.
Embu County for example managed a mere 5 straight A’s last year, results which Dr. John Olouch of KUCCPS termed as a wakeup call for the stakeholders in the devolved unit in determining future distribution of professionals in areas such as engineering and medicine.
The MP who has in the recent past won accolades for bringing various stakeholders among them parents, professionals, banks, Saccos, state corporations, private firms, universities, and government departments together to elevate education levels in the County promised a wide range of gifts and other goodies to best-performing students and schools.
Already Sh53 million, the MP disclosed had been invested in education programs to ensure not a single child remained out of school.
Plans, he said were also underway to digitize all the schools in the County through the support of the government and external donors.
He announced that from next year an ambitious project to elevate infrastructural and bursary levels of day schools would come in place to ensure that parents in the school paid only a minimum of Sh2, 000 for their children.
The legislator appealed to the Ministry of Education, parents, and other stakeholders to support him in the program.
“From next year I will ensure that parents with students in day schools will only pay a minimum of Sh2,000 fee for their children’’, MP said.
He said that based on the already achieved successes, the constituency should in the next two years become the benchmark for education for the parliamentary zones nationally.
While noting the importance of mentorship among the youth, the MP thanked parents for attending the forum and warned them against pushing their children into careers they were not passionate to pursue as that contributed to the failure in the achievement of career and professional goals.
The MP noted that few professionally successful people in the region would deny the importance of mentors and role models in the lives and education of the young adding that the roots of success in his education and as a professional after graduation from University were deepened by mentors he met with along the way.
