Why is the KCSE Exam in Kenya So Hard?

One of the questions I keep on encountering is as to why the KCSE exam in Kenya is so hard. This is not an idle question. You just have to take a good look at the KCSE results, to understand that it is indeed a tough examination. What with results where majority of the individuals who sit for the exam end up scoring grades D, D- and E?

Looking at a typical KCSE exam paper, you won’t fail to notice that the examination is set up to examine a wide range of things. The exam, for one, is set to gauge the candidate’s attention in class. It is very hard for a candidate who wasn’t attentive in class to pass the typical KCSE exam paper. Further, the KCSE is set to gauge the candidate’s ability to read by himself or herself. It is very hard to pass the typical KCSE exam paper with just the stuff you heard from the teacher in the classroom. You have to have swotted by yourself quite a bit. Further, the KCSE exam is designed to gauge a candidate’s intelligence. It is very hard to pass the typical KCSE exam paper if you are not reasonably intelligent, even if you had the very best teachers and learning resources. So basically, you find that the KCSE exam papers are designed to gauge the candidate’s intelligence and hard-work. You have to be both reasonably intelligent and hard working to pass the KCSE exam.

Yet there are those who feel that the KCSE is deliberately designed to be hard, so as to fail majority of the students (who then become cheap labor for the elites). Whether or not this view is correct, you can’t help getting the feeling that the KCSE exam is set in such a way that the person of average intelligence just can’t hack it. Yet many of the people who fail the KCSE exam are otherwise reasonably intelligent folks who would perform well in other nations’ national exams. In that regard, for instance, you may find a person who is working as a cyber café assistant, yet they only scored a D or D+ at KCSE. Yet you find such an individual working with complex web-based applications such as the Kenya ntsa ecitizen system, which is used by people who are applying for driving licenses or those seeking to renew Kenyadriving licenses. To the extent that the cyber café assistant is able to operate such a system, it means that he is a reasonably intelligent person. And so the question that arises is as to why such a fellow would have performed so dismally at KCSE...

But it is also important to understand that the KCSE is also a pre-university exam. It is a university selection exam. For that reason, it has to be reasonably tough, so as to identify the students who can cope with the rigors of university education. So this is perhaps one of the valid reasons as to why the KCSE exam is designed to be so tough.