Tutors who handle national examination classes become instant celebrities when exam results, like the recent Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) test, are released and one of the “secrets” of producing “stellar” performance is “completing the syllabus in second term”. It is the same under the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination.
Even with the no-room-to-manoeuvre school term periods under the Covid-19 disruptions that have given both the government, enterprise, and families sleepless nights, a number of schools that gave media interviews after the release of KCPE results still managed to complete the syllabus “in second term and dedicated third term for revision”.
Granted, national examinations classes are supposed to be busy beyond the normal schedules, however how schools handle the work outside the normal schedule is intriguing.
A number studies and government directives have faulted learning programmes under basic education that leave no room for the pupils and students “to be children”.
Class Eight pupils and Form 4s — even lower classes, right from Form One — are on a tight-leash programme that leaves no room to play, do sports, and take part in club activities, some of them known to prepare students for the life after Class Eight, Form Four, the diplomas and university degrees.
Could the back-to-back school calendar be another form of child labour that is disguised as working hard to secure one’s bright future in the professions and general life?
Sadly, parents have accepted the extra hours in school and illegal levies for “remedial teaching” that help classes to complete the syllabus ahead of the competing and neighbouring schools.
According to the Children Act, Section 10 (1), “Every child shall be protected from economic exploitation and any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development”. Take note: Any work.
Critically, education ought not to be restricted to looking at books, sitting exams daily, weekly and monthly as learners prepare for the final competition that is the national exam.
There is a need to assess the possible harm in endless book work that seems to hurt a child’s “health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development” like the Act says.
Many schools that are “benchmarking” copy and paste what the star examination centres are doing to the extent of depriving learners of their useful sleep.
In some schools, learners do not break for mid-term rest and if they do, they carry loads of home assignments that are not just back-breaking but also confine them more than the closely woven school days that start by 4am and run to midnight. And it is an annual cycle.
Bombarded with all these negative incentives, Dr Mary Njeri Kinyanjui, recently wrote in The Standard newspaper, “students end up celebrating the end of education by burning books. ‘At last freedom has come.'”
At what time do these young people be themselves, appreciate their environments, and test things outside the prison-type schedules? Is this tight schedule not “hazardous” to child development since the young minds should get time to attempt debating, try public speaking, test word power, identify talents or just relax while reading novels or browse the bookshelves and read newspapers in the library?
Experts have assessed child labour and variably say it is a programme or chores routine that exposes a child to duties beyond their age, responsibility, understanding and expectation.
While children ought to be introduced to some chores, it should never be their work to feed the family or do it from start to finish. They should only appreciate the process and allowed to grow and develop interest gradually.
Why are children being forced to fight for top grades at the expense of everything else, including the much needed creativity and enough sleep? It is high time Kenya protected children from the back-breaking school routine in the search for top grades in examinations.
