By Ken Leshan Sankale
kensankale@gmail.com
kensankale@gmail.com
I always enjoy to debate and present my opinion in topics such as one
which was posted in the daily nation on 1st Dec 2014. The question
“Do you support decision to stop ranking of schools and candidates” may be one
hard question to give a suitable answer not only at individual level but also in the Ministry of Education in Kenya.
To introduce
my opinion, I would like to say that ranking of schools is important in one way
or the other. Before I state the importance of ranking, I first wish to express
my concern on the school I attended during my basic level education, Namelok
Primary School, located in Kajiado County and specifically Kajido South
Constituency, which for the last couple of years, have recorded poor
performance and among the bottom five schools in the whole County.
The same
school in subject managed to produce leaders and professionals in varied fields
and of bright minds such as Kajiado County Executive Member for Agriculture Livestock and Tourism, Mr. Joshua Majakusi, Mwalimu Lenchasi Tono, the current Head Master of Enkii
Primary School and many more performing professionals and leaders in other
sectors. The performance of the school has been worsening day in day out and a
lot of solutions brought to action but none worked best as we are yet to see an
improvement in terms of the performance.
Namelok
Elites Community Based Organization carried out an independent detailed
research to find out the leading factors contributing to the poor performance
of the school that was once one of the best in the district, but I am sad to
report that none of the authorities was able to address the problems that were
recorded.
All the
concerns that were raised by the community, individuals and the organizations
based in the area are because ranking of schools is still achieved by the
concerned authorities up to date. If not ranking, then it means that we
couldn’t have realized if there was a problem in the school on regional basis.
This ranking
has helped the school to measure the level and quality of educational resources
they provide to the pupils and generally poor performance will specifically
tell that something must be addressed.
Ranking of
Schools is an important strategy. It determines and addresses the weakest areas
of a particular school and come up with relevant strategic options to improve
these areas.
The process
of ranking schools should not be discouraged but rather taken as a serious way
to improve the school performance. When the concerned authorities of a school
are aware of why their school or their candidates are not performing well in
academics, then it will be easier to look for an alternative option of
improving the areas where they suspect there may be a problem pulling them back
and this could only be seen through ranking.
Ranking also
could be used to answer questions like; why is our school or candidate not
leading the country? What do we need to adjust to be among the best in the
country? And many more questions.
I do support
ranking of schools and encourage concern authorities not to stop ranking
schools, it has been there for many years and we enjoy celebrating best schools
in the country as well as best candidates. In fact it is now our schools’
culture and I prefer this remaining the same with no alteration unless there is
a proposal to perform a different ranking method.
In
conclusion, it is important to say that ranking schools will not demoralize
schools/candidates that have performed poorly, but will manage to prepare the
rest of the candidates and ensuring that proper actions and reactions are taken
to help them avoid a bad performance.
