On MSCE 2020: A Comment on Comments

 

Is it sacred ground? Is it too soon? Is it not Richie Online material? In all honesty, I should not be talking about this and more so today but having not written an article on Friday, however, I feel like I should comment on the comments on the Malawi School Certificate of Education results. Why does it have such a bold name, by the way?

Earlier this week, the Malawi National Examinations Board released results of the MSCE examinations. The most contentious issue was that the percentage of those who passed was just a little over 41, leading people to making memes that the pass rate did not even beat the alcohol percentage of Malawi Gin. That was a funny meme for a not so funny situation. So much has been said about this pass rate and I was wondering if I could add a voice to this now that people are blaming the students, the DPP and even innocent Bluetooth speakers made by kids of the same age or younger in southern China.

Covid-19. That is where we will start this. There is a lot of talk on how the pandemic may have led to the poor performance of students in the examination. I would like to think that the pandemic may have a lot to do with the low pass rate. The fact that schools were closed in the months prior to the time that the pandemic knocked on our door may have quenched the momentum that students had in their preparation for the examinations. By the time they were getting back to class, they may have lost their rhythm and may not have been on track. Despite the mechanism of how this may have happened, we know that the pandemic had a hand in this. You impregnated a lot of these “form form” girls, anyway. Some of you chewed their fees while they were on Covid holiday and for some it was the loss of jobs or revenue that may have disturbed their children’s education and preparation for examinations. So there we have it then. Covid-19 ruined things for us.

Covid-19 was not alone when it was pulling down the pass rate for MSCE 2020. Some of these students brought it upon themselves. In saying this, I would like to agree with those who are saying that the modern-day crop of students is too busy with extracurricular activities to an extent that their academics are neglected. It may not be all, but most of them are in this boat. Students of the later day have a lot of distractions. Whereas some of us only had the ZTE Airtel phone with no one to call or text, the modern day student will have a Handy or Itel smartphone that is loaded with social media applications, memes and skrrr skrrr music. In a world where people struggle to keep up with work because of the social media, you cannot expect anyone to do well in school while they have half their brain thinking of how best to approach that girl or to evade (read as “chop the money of”) that predatory sugar daddy. Then there is alcohol, fashion and those poorly taken high definition photos. I will not even talk about those. The point is just that students who are for some reason not disciplined enough to resist modern day shenanigans are just too busy to put in the effort that the jealous MSCE requires.

But wait a minute. We may want to hold on before we crucify 15-year-old kids for not being serious. Are these children not supposed to have parents and teachers who should be guiding them? Do not answer that for now because I would like to bring your attention to something that is a little more interesting. Some of you may know the conditions for the award of the Malawi School Certificate. The condition is that one should obtain a pass in six subjects including English Language with at least one credit or distinction OR obtain a pass in five subjects, including English Language with at least three credits/distinctions. Here is one for you who keep rubbing it in our face that English is not a measure of intelligence; I will deal with you later but for now just know that English is important. Back to our issue. According to my certificate which I am looking at as I write, a pass is a grade of 7 and 8; a credit is 3 to 6 and distinctions are 1 and 2. You are familiar with this grading system. To put things into context, when we say that we had a 41 percent pass rate, what it means is that about 60 percent of the candidates failed to get either a 7 or 8 in 6 subjects including English language, according to the first condition. Or rather, they failed to fulfil the second condition of five subjects including either three credits or distinctions. While you are trying to wrap your head around this, think of how there are many on that list of people who have barely managed to fulfil this condition and will have a certificate that will never open the doors of tertiary education. When you think about the failure to meet such conditions and the fact that 6 out of 10 candidates failed to do so, we need to ask ourselves as to whether the issue rests with the candidates themselves or something bigger. I will go with something bigger.

Educationists may correct me here, but I have heard that the grading system is standardized and tailored to the performance of the candidates in that particular year. While I am not for the dilution of standards to accommodate people who do not fulfill the requirements, I find myself finding it hard to shake the suspicion that the grading system may have been set to punish the candidates for the 2020 examinations. In the run up to the examinations, there were hurdles along the way due to incidents of leaking. Prior to administration of some exams, some mainstream media outlets published papers that were yet to be administered as evidence of leaking. That led to suspensions of part of the examinations and some of the papers had to be retaken in what was almost a replica of the 2007 situation with the same examinations. You get my point? The Malawi National Examinations Board had a hand in this because if you are old enough to remember what happened with the results in 2007, then you will agree with me that we need to give “Johnny skrr skrrr” a bit of break when pointing the blaming finger. There were other forces at play.

When the 41 percent figure was announced, others jumped out and flashed the scrapped Junior Certificate as the cause to this disaster. Honestly, I do not have a strong opinion on that and I am yet to have one but I understand the sentiments. When you look at people’s junior certificates along with their Malawi School certificates, you can see a noticeable direct correlation. In other schools where the junior certificates were used as a screening tool, some students would not be allowed to continue to Form 3 for either failing the exam entirely or failing to perform to a certain standard. This ensured that only the students who were somewhat ready for the MSCE challenge were allowed to sit for the exam. Not every Jim and Jane could wave a Primary School Leaving Certificate and throw their hat in the MSCE ring. The results were that the general performance was good, but having not compared the general picture before and after the scrapping of the junior certificate examinations, I am wondering if the scrapping has anything to do with these particular results. My point is just that the examinations were not taken off with this crop and if indeed the effect was there, we could have seen this disaster in previous years. No strong opinions here, but I think we are pushing the JCE issue too far. With regards to these results, at least.

I am reliably told that there are some schools in which all the students who sat for the examinations failed. I am no educationist but something tells me that there might be something wrong with the way students are taught. Here is a little story. A couple of years after I had graduated from St Patrick’s Secondary School, I found myself reading the university selection list. In that year only 5 students from the school had made it to the University of Malawi in contrast to our year in which about 30 of us from a class of 80 managed to make it to UNIMA. Out of confusion, anger and disappointment, I found myself wondering as to what the issue might have been. When I asked a teacher in a visit to the school’s staff room, she gave me students’ answer sheets to review their compositions. Her point was that the students were not working as hard as some of us who had gone before them but in a separate chat with fellow alumni, some pointed out that the issue may have been the teachers who were failing their duty of instilling the discipline and virtues required for excellence. I thought that both had a point. Resources? Story for another day.

In my time as a student, I never saw any teacher walking around school premised in shorts and slippers. They all were decently dressed and even when they were out on sports or weekend duty, one would always distinguish between a teacher and a student. Now you see that teachers have a laid back attitude towards their work outside the classroom and I would like to believe that the same is reflected in the classroom environment. When we see teachers failing to express themselves in English, the language in which they are supposed to teach Biology to your child in preparation for the important examinations, then we have a serious issue. While not particular to this exam, the quality of teaching has something to do with the failure rate too.

Reaching this far, I think we can agree that we have the students, MANEB and Covid-19 to blame for this disaster. So what do we do? If you have a ward who is sitting for the MSCE this year or next year, you may want to go old school on them and take that phone away from them. Well. Not completely. Just take away that iPhone 8 and give them a small phone for making phone calls. If possible, it should not be able to send text messages. It is all they need because they do not need anything smarter. Then you need to enforce discipline and the necessary virtues that enabled you to get the certificate you have; otherwise they will be in the group of those who fail to meet the conditions for the award of the school certificate. MSCE candidates need to be taught as to what they are going into and the implications their grade has on their future.

I am not so sure as to what we should do to the examinations board. A lot of you provided your unsolicited suggestions to the President when you responded to the leaking of the Agriculture paper on social media. I am pretty sure that the President read your Facebook post or tweet and considered it. He kind of just didn’t do something about it, but we all know that this is out of our hands. Covid-19? Well. Schools are open and we hope that skrr skrr teachers are doing the good job of emulating the techniques used by veterans in educating our children. I also hope that no one will close the schools for Covid-19 reasons. 

Education may not be about examinations, but what we have at our hands are exam results that have shown us the big gaps in our education system.

May this be the last time such happens! Vilekeke!