KNEC to track learners to identify those being left behind

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) Dr. David Njengere before the National Assembly's Education Committee chaired by Tinderet MP Julius Meli.[Elvis Ogina, Standard]

The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) is preparing to overhaul the way learning outcomes are assessed, with a new model seeking to track every learner from Grade Three to Grade Nine and establish why some children fall behind.

The proposed assessment model comes a decade after the rollout of the Competency Based Education(CBE) and would significantly change the way learners are traditionally measured learning, shifting the focus from national averages and examination scores to individual learners, schools and the conditions that influence their performance.

KNEC chief executive officer David Njengere said the new approach was designed to move assessment away from simply producing examination results to using data to improve learning.

He said the first assessment at Grade Three would provide a baseline for every child, with subsequent assessments tracking the same learners as they progress through school.

“We must come up with a system that is, census. Let’s make our census. And then let’s make it longitudinal. Meaning that every child is assessed. So you are not making generalisations at that point. Two, you move with the same child,” Njengere said.

Under the model, Grade Three would provide the baseline, Grade Six the midline and Grade Nine the endline, allowing KNEC to establish whether interventions introduced between the assessments are improving learning.

But Njengere said the most important period would be the two years immediately after the Grade Three assessment.

He described Grades Four and Five as the critical intervention years when the findings of the baseline assessment should be translated into action.

Similarly, the Grade Seven and Eight would act as a separate intervention stage after the Grade Six assessment.

The plan seeks to establish what is preventing children from reaching the expected learning outcomes and address those problems before they advance further in the education system.

The proposed change comes as independent evidence points to substantial gaps in learning and unequal conditions in which children are expected to learn.

The latest assessment by Usawa Agenda found that 27.3 per cent of Grade Seven learners could not read and comprehend an English story written at Grade Three level, while 32.6 per cent could not solve a Grade Three-level numeracy problem.

More than four in every 10 Grade Seven learners lacked both foundational literacy and numeracy competencies.

However, KNEC says the assessments are largely sample based and do not address the exact problem for each learner thus the need for the new approach that will be learner-specific.

“We must come up with a system that is foremost, census. Let’s make our census. And then let’s make it longitudinal. Meaning that every child is assessed. So you are not making generalisations at that point. Two, you move with the same child,” Njengere said.

Under the proposed model, every learner would be assessed at Grade Three, providing a baseline from which KNEC would follow the same child through the education system.

Grade Six would provide a midline assessment, while Grade Nine would become the endline.

But Njengere said the most important period would be the two years between the baseline and midline, when schools and government agencies should act on the problems identified.

He wants Grades Four and Five to become the main intervention years to address the issues raised in Grade 3 assessment.

Under the KNEC model, the assessment will also examine what may have contributed to poor performance by a learner.

The approach is anchored on KNEC’s proposed focus on three measures of the education system: quality, equity and inclusion.

For example, if national performance was at the expected level but a particular county was performing below that level, the data would point to an equity problem requiring further investigation.

The same analysis would then be conducted at sub-county level.

A county that was performing below the national level could still contain a sub-county performing above expectations, allowing officials to narrow the intervention to the areas actually struggling.

The analysis would eventually reach individual schools.

“This school within that sub-county, it could even be below expectations. That now tells you we can flag not just the county or the sub-county, but we can even flag the specific schools that need intervention,” Njengere said.

The model would go a step further by examining individual learners within a school.

A school could be performing well overall while a small group of learners continued to perform below expectations. The system would allow such children to be identified for further investigation rather than being hidden by the school’s overall results.

Njengere said the causes could range from unidentified special needs and hearing difficulties to bullying and other circumstances affecting a child’s ability to learn.

The assessment would also seek to establish whether children are attending school regularly and whether teachers are present and teaching.

KNEC intends to examine not only whether a teacher reported to school, but whether the teacher was in class and actually teaching.

“It’s not just attendance for the learner, it’s also attendance for the teacher,” he said.

“The child could have been in school, but the teacher was not there.”

The council also wants to examine factors outside the classroom that may affect learning.

Njengere cited transport as one of the issues that could be examined, arguing that long journeys to and from school could affect children’s concentration, time for homework, rest and participation in other activities.

Health is another factor that would be investigated, particularly where poor attendance is linked to illness.

The intention is to produce reports that can be acted upon not only by the  Ministry of Education but also by other government agencies where their sectors are found to be affecting learning.

At Grade Six, KNEC would assess the same cohort to determine whether the interventions had produced the desired results.

Grades Seven and Eight would provide another intervention period before the Grade Nine assessment becomes the endline.

Njengere said KNEC was working with the Teachers Service Commission, Ministry of Education, World Bank and UNESCO on the framework, with a technical team bringing together officials from the different institutions.

He said the council was also working on ways of measuring the seven core competencies under the Competency-Based Curriculum, including communication and collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and digital literacy.

Rather than creating examinations specifically labelled as tests of critical thinking or creativity, KNEC is developing indicators and “proxy items” that can establish whether learners are developing the competencies through ordinary learning areas.

Njengere said the Australian Council for Educational Research had offered to work with KNEC in developing and testing the assessment items.

The wider ambition, he said, was to change the purpose of assessment.

“Education should not be a disempowering agent. It should be an empowering agent,” he said.

He argued that the education system should begin with the assumption that every child has some potential and that its responsibility is to identify and nurture it.

“If we have a case of a child being called a failure at the end of this education, it is not the child who will have failed. It is the system that will have failed to know the potential and nurture that potential,” he said.