Kenya teachers at war with government over schools ranking

Teachers in Kenya have disagreed with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) after it decided not to rank schools and students based on performance in the 2014 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination

The teachers, under the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT), expected schools to be ranked in the KSCE results released on Tuesday.

MoEST Cabinet Secretary, Jacob Kaimenyi, said the decision to stop the ranking was not only proper but long overdue.

Kaimenyi said several task forces, including the 2012 Douglas Odhiambo taskforce on education reforms, the 2008 David Koech chaired Parliamentary Committee on Education, the 1999 David Koech Commission of Enquiry, and Kilemi Mwiria task force on secondary school fees, had recommended the scrapping of the ranking system.

"Therefore I did not wake up one morning like a mad man just to ban ranking of schools," Kaimenyi said.

ButKNUT Vs MoEST, said Kaimenyi’s claim is a misrepresentation of the facts in the Mwiria task force reports.

"I was part of the Mwiria taskforce. We did not recommend the abolishment of ranking. What we recommended was a review of the tools of ranking," he said

"As for the rest, if indeed they did recommend the abolishment of ranking, why was it never implemented?"

The union leader argued that failure to rank schools by performance would lead to a decline in quality of education, since there is no "measuring stick" to gauge them with.