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In school but not learning

In my article today I’m going to share with you how Prof. Olubayi Olubayi cried on my shoulder about the terribly low pass rate for the Kenya National Examinations Council’s (KNEC’s) Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations. It’s been bothering him for a long time, and he has now shown me the evidence which, with his academic scrupulousness, he has been compiling.

The KCSE pass mark is C+, which is usually less than 50% of the score in a subject. Prof Olubayi has been studying the KNEC website and media reports on the issue, and here’s the sad reality: since 2016, 80% of Kenyan children fail their KCSE after twelve years of schooling, meaning only two out of ten students pass. This with the exception of 2017 and 2018, when only one out of ten passed.

“Imagine a business that manufactures products,” Prof Olubayi lamented, “but where only two out of ten are good enough to sell. How long would such a business last?” That is the situation in Kenya, despite our hugely expensive public education system. The Government spends approximately 20% of its annual budget on this broken system, with the amount allocated for 2023/2024 being Shs.628 billion.

He went on to explain that there are many reasons for this mass failure – while adding that solutions do exist. Kenya has achieved near universal school attendance, but not universal learning, which reminded me of how the difference between diversity and inclusiveness has been described: diversity shows an invitation to the party, while inclusiveness sees you being invited to dance.

Prof. Olubayi concluded that the country is funding failure, where the victims are the majority of children, inevitably resulting in lowered development potential for the country.

If you ask Kenyans, whether well-educated professionals or ordinary citizens, to guess the pass rate for KCSE – as Prof Olubayi has been consistently doing – most suggest 70% or 80%. But as we see, the reality is very different. Sadly, most of the 20% who pass went to private primary schools or academies for their foundation primary schooling of Grades 1 to 3. Almost all the children of the truly poor, who cannot afford private primary schools, simply fail after attending school for twelve years. They attend, but they do not learn.

On January 20th 2023, the Nation ran the headline “The majority of 2022 KCSE students get low grades”. It was referring to the results that had just been officially announced by the CS Education, who stated that only 173,345 out of the 881,416 students who’d sat the Grade 12 (Form Four) national examination had passed with a C+ or above. This translates to a 20% pass rate, where C+ is the minimum Grade 12 national examination score that qualifies one to study for a degree programme at a university.

The low pass rate of only 22% for 2023 is the highest in the last 8 years. By comparison, in Mauritius – which has the best education system in Africa – the pass rate for the school certificate examination in 2022 was 78%. The pass rate in Malaysia is 55%. The percentage of students passing GCSE in the UK with a grade of C or higher was 73%, and those attaining a grade of A or A+ was 26% – which is higher than those passing with a C+ or higher in Kenya. In France, the pass rate for the baccalaureate is usually around 80%.

It is for these reasons that in 2012 Prof Olubayi created Kiwimbi, an NGO learning centre focused on interventions to raise the pass rates in primary and secondary schools in Kenya.

There they use the “Teach at the Right Level” (TaRL) method of the Indian NGO Pratham, in combination with “spaced-repetition”, a learning technique typically performed with flashcards, and they are obtaining excellent results. In the 2023 KCPE results one of the primary schools next to Kiwimbi in Amagoro had more than half the students score more than 300 points – a performance as good as that of our best private primary schools. The same methods are being deployed elsewhere in rural western Kenya, with similarly encouraging results in secondary schools.

Other interventions include persuading principals of selected boarding schools to respect the science of learning by allowing students to sleep for 8 hours, removing calculators, promoting general reading, and tutoring students in small groups.

Learn more about how kiwimbi operates and the impact it has been achieving by going to their website, www.kiwimbi.org. And beyond just browsing it, how can you help it to go to scale in its mission of transforming our pass rates? Surely together we can do so much better.

From Jomo to Uhuru, Rao’s Nine Lives

Like Joe Wanjui and Manu Chandaria, about whom I have written recently, I got to know Sharad Rao through Rotary. But having recently read his autobiography, From Jomo to Uhuru, Rao’s Nine Lives – Reminiscences of the Power, Courage and Intrigues that Shaped Kenya’s Post-Colonial History, I now know him very much better.

Being with Rao one appreciates his integrity and frankness, calling a spade a spade, plus his calmness and clarity of thinking, his wonderful memory and his gentle humour – such powerful contributors to his extraordinary legal career. All this is so clearly reflected in his memoir, a follow up to his earlier book, Indian Dukawallas – Their Contribution to the Political and Economic Development of Kenya, which was published in 2016.

His autobiography was launched in June of this year, and in it Rao takes us from his origins through his education and his legal life to the community projects that now occupy his time in his late eighties. Two themes within the book stood out for me: the racism of the colonialists vis-à-vis both Asians and Africans, and what it takes for judges to perform honourably.

Let me start with the racism, and I can’t resist sharing with you this awful quote in the book from Charles Eliot, the colonial administrator who initiated the policy of white supremacy here: “The average Englishman tolerates a black man who admits his inferiority, and even those who show a good fight and give in, but he cannot tolerate dark colour combined with an intelligence in any way equal to his own.”

Rao also quotes Colonel Grogan as having proclaimed “We Europeans have to go on ruling this country and rule it with iron discipline.” Don’t mention Grogan in my house, as my wife Evelyn Mungai’s great grandmother Wanjiru had her land where the Norfolk Hotel now stands grabbed by this awful fellow.

Prejudice against Asians continued after Kenya became decolonised, and he tells us numerous stories of how he and others became victims of such exclusion.

Let me now turn to the second theme that struck me. In a chapter on his chairmanship of the Judges and Magistrates Vetting Board in 2011 we learn so much about what it takes to be a high performing judge. For as he and his colleagues sat in judgement on the extent to which the behaviour of the judges was consistent with the recently passed 2010 Constitution, they had to reflect deeply on who should qualify to continue serving on the bench and who should step down.

Their purpose, he writes, was “to remove the taint of the judiciary as being corrupt, unduly favourable to those in power, obsessed with technicalities, incapable of dealing with cases with requisite promptness, and generally unable or unwilling to administer justice in an appropriate manner.” He writes about what good and bad behaviour entails, and it occurred to me that the best way of summing it all up would be to say they must be highly emotionally intelligent.

Among Rao’s many wonderfully narrated stories, I want to pick out the one in 1974 where President Kenyatta announced that from then on Presidents of all societies, associations and clubs should be called Chairman and not President – as Kenya had only one President, himself. This happened shortly before Rao was due to visit China, and he told then Attorney General Charles Njonjo that Chairman Mao would take offence if he also called himself Chairman. He was given exemption, so for the two weeks he was in China Kenya had two Presidents. A good example of Rao’s easy humour.

For many years thereafter the edict was adhered to, till one day at a Rotary Conference where Kijana Wamalwa was the Guest of Honour and I was giving the vote of thanks I asked him whether Rotary Chairmen could now again be allowed to be called Presidents, as they were everywhere else in the world. “What’s in a name?” he mumbled, and I said I took it this was an assent. From then on the title “President” was again no longer restricted to State House.

I read that in 1957, while studying law in London, Rao lived in Hampstead – which is where I grew up. What stage was I at in 1957? I had just entered my high school years. Oh well, now we are both in our third age, with so many ups and downs in our lives to look back on. I have yet to do so in the form of a book, but so good that Rao has.

Taming the abuse of power

Readers of this column will have seen previous articles of mine in which I have written about Leaders Circles I have facilitated with my colleague Frank Kretzschmar. The last one was about sustainability, and the theme of our most recent one was “How we deal with power: from victim to perpetrator to victim”.

We’ve all heard that “information is power”, and as Frank and I looked up other suitable quotes before our story-telling gathering we came across some useful provocations, including “Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best,” from doomsday merchant Edward Abbe; and, also pessimistically, William Gaddis shared that “Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.”

More upliftingly, Lao Tzu told us that “Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” And Alice Walker reminded us that “the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

How power is wielded lies at the centre of whether things work or don’t work, we briefed our participants as we invited them to the event. Power itself is values-neutral. So at what point does it become good or bad? Where and how does abuse begin?

Who determines that power was indeed abused? How is it even possible that power does get abused? Does it happen when moral concepts are excluded from the exercising of power? When corruption is used to distort rules of the game that had been based on a broad consensus? When individual powerful people lose all sense of self-awareness and proportion?

We are seeing that too many neurotics and egocentrics are key players in the power game. And as a result, we give up on essential issues out of comfort, thoughtlessness or anticipatory obedience. They then take advantage of the resulting vacuum. Are we not to blame for this?

So how do you tame the abuse of power? As leaders, you cannot do without power. How do you empower yourself and others? And how far may or must you go in order to gain (back) power and influence?

How do the exercise of power and ethical action coexist, for there are fewer and fewer fixed reference systems? Exercising power without stepping over the boundaries of individuals is not possible. But is it possible to exercise power while remaining innocent? It is undoubtedly a question of balance.

We were interested to hear where and how those who participated in our event have succeeded in keeping power in the good area, and this we certainly did. We learned about the challenge of leading volunteers, in business and professional organisations, and in service clubs like Rotary and Lions.

And we talked about the need to “decolonise” and spread decision-making from the over-influential Global North towards the Global South, including in how research funds are allocated.

We also heard stories of power abusers – from our own traffic police to Vladimir Putin – and of being the direct victims of more powerful and unconstrained players.

One spoke about the fragility of power, as evidenced in the Arab Spring (and more recently in Sri Lanka, and with Johnson in the UK); while another worried about the constraints faced by the UN Security Council in fulfilling its mission of holding the world together.

I reflected that rather than wanting to feel powerful, my expectation was and is that I can be of influence, and above all in bringing people together – as a mediator, an integrator, a connector.

I enjoy helping others to building their capacity so I can empower them, and hence delegate to them. I see the goodness of power-sharing, which requires openness and trust.

Here I am, deep into my third age, a time of life when most of us no longer expect to wield direct power (except, perhaps, in the political arena). One way in which I hope I am being of influence is through these columns.

A few weeks ago I published by 400th one, and this one marks fifteen years since by first contribution here. My sense has always been that I largely preach to the already converted, but my hope is that my readers will emerge reinforced in their views, and so promote them more boldly. I might even convert a few here and there, and who knows, perhaps enable them to become more powerful.

In closing, I urge you to exercise your power by voting next month for men and women who will wield power responsibly. Or else you will be their victims. But hey, I’m preaching to the converted.

Morality through the eyes of chief rabbi

I have been reading an amazing book by an amazing man. The title of the 2020 book is Morality – Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times and its author is Jonathan Sacks. Sacks rose to become the Chief Rabbi of Britain, and was known as one of the country’s leading public intellectuals.

He was knighted in 2005, and was later awarded a lordship. Lord Sacks died in November 2020, the year in which his last book was published. His first rabbinical appointment was at the Golders Green Synagogue in North West London, just a few miles from where I was brought up. He was appointed there in 1978, a year after I moved to Kenya, but I have since heard him speak on BBC – which was always very rewarding.

His morality book is so consistently informative and thought provoking that I felt like quoting every other sentence. In it he worries about the current unfortunate move from “We” to “I” in the West, with liberal democracy threatened by the demagoguery of populism (as personified by Trump’s election in America and the Brexit battle in Britain). Public discourse has grown toxic; family life has been breaking down, and drug abuse and depression are on the rise, particularly among youth.

The book takes us back to how morality has looked from the time of the hunter-gatherers to the philosophers of ancient Greece and through the subsequent centuries until today. His gloomy contemporary analysis relates in particular to Britain and the US, but as soon as I saw his distinctions between the “We” and the “I” I immediately thought of Ubuntu as capturing the spirit of the former and of our Kenyan scenario as reflecting too much of the latter.

Relative to those in many other African countries we Kenyans tend to be more individualistic, materialistic and aggressively competitive, and our politics reflect the same never-ending zero-sum squabbles as Sacks writes about in his world. It’s why despite him never referring to Ubuntu or to Africa more generally, so much of what he describes is as relevant for us as it is for his Western readers.

He traces today’s crisis to our loss of a strong, shared moral code and to our promotion of self-interest over the common good. We have “outsourced” morality to the market and the state, he complains, but neither is capable of showing us how to live. Sacks shows that “there is no liberty without morality and no freedom without responsibility,” arguing that we all must play our part in rebuilding a common moral foundation.

He comes down really hard on the liberal revolution of the 1960s, the “Swinging Sixties” of my youth, which championed individual freedoms over traditional values. It was the time of “free love”, the time when smoking marihuana became all the rage. For many, life was all about self-indulgence and instant gratification, about rights over responsibilities.

He also blames the deregulation of the 1980s that defined the economics of Thatcherism and Reaganomics; and the austerity policies that followed the financial crisis of 2008. All this has led to increasing inequality, with many being left behind.

Sacks shows how the “culture climate change” of migrating from “We” to “I” has seriously undermined the moral foundations that once held us together, and it is what led to many of the societal problems with which we are grappling in this 21st century.

So is there hope for a future with a stronger moral underpinning? For the late Chief Rabbi the answer, as it always has been, is to work from the bottom up, through the family and the community, through small groupings where the blight of urban and national anonymity is absent.

He recognises the higher levels of morality shown to be displayed by those who regularly attend places of worship, and by those who are active in voluntary organisations. And he emphasises the vital importance of building high-trust relationships, not least in business – the contemporary idea that one can simultaneously do well and good.

There’s some talk in Kenya about living our national values and developing a national ethos, including in the BBI. But there’s woefully little on that from our leaders. So it’s up to us, you and me. In our families, in our communities and in our workplaces; in our places of worship and where we volunteer.

Let us focus on national values in Covid-19 times

At this time of national crisis I’ve been thinking about our national values – that long list buried deep in our Constitution. For the small proportion of Kenyans who may have forgotten one or two of them (pardon my sarcasm) here they are:

  • Patriotism, national unity, the rule of law, democracy and participation of the people
  • Sharing and devolution of power
  • Human dignity, equity, social justice, inclusiveness, equality, human rights, non-discrimination and protection of the marginalised
  • Good governance, integrity, transparency and accountability sustainable development.

As I scanned the vast collection I asked myself whether what we’ve been going through has led us to live these values differently from before, and it didn’t take me long to reach a positive conclusion. At least for many of them, and in particular the bunch in the third bullet.

Certainly the government, and by no means just the government, has been concerned about protecting the marginalised, and adopting an inclusive approach to its policies – which it has been developing in partnership with the private sector and others. We have seen fine examples of respect for human rights and human dignity – with the notable exception of that terrible display of police brutality on the first evening of the 7pm curfew.

Keeping with government, we have applauded the way our elected leaders have put aside their political games to focus on the wellbeing of the citizenry. In a spirit of national unity, we are so relieved that the boisterous BBI rallies and all the money wasted on them is now being put to better use.

What a challenge it’s been for the media, who must now come up with headlines other than ones that just feature Ruto, Raila and Co. But they’ve done well, informing us and guiding us on the latest developments with the Coronavirus outbreak, enabling citizen participation.

Then, as far as national unity in the context of devolution is concerned, the national and county governments have been collaborating well together, with the frequent zero-sum games between them muted.

Kenyans have never been known for exhibiting great patriotism – except for when our athletes break the tape in New York or London or Berlin. But now we have one of our cabinet members on the global podium: Mutahi Kagwe, recognised in America’s Wall Street Journal as “Kenya’s unlikely coronavirus hero,” making us all proud of him.

Next my mind turned to the Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund, whose board consists of a distinguished group of private sector leaders who have pledged transparency and accountability as they “support the government’s efforts in the supply of medical facilities and equipment and support for vulnerable communities with their immediate needs, including food.” Plus working with professional services firms PwC, Deloitte and EY who are providing pro-bono assurance services.

See? It’s too easy to pick out examples of different levels and sectors of society doing a great job behaving in ways consistent with our national values.

The big question will be whether what we are seeing now is sustained. The last value in the list features sustainability, along with development. For sure what we are going through presents a massive national challenge to the sustainability of everything from the Big Four to public debt to tax revenue generation, while so many both for-profit and not-for-profit private entities are at risk of total collapse in the not -too-distant future.

For now though let us celebrate all the ways in which our national values have come to life at this most difficult of times. They have brought the best out of us, and it is a good moment to reflect on what it will take to prevent us regressing to those more selfish, greedy ways that already seem like long ago.

It’s all about leadership of course. In the last few weeks many of our leaders have proved to us that they are more than capable of guiding us to better places. Yet when the Coronavirus will no longer be there to draw us together, and as the 2022 elections beckon ever closer, it is us citizens who will need to insist that our leaders hold on to the higher standards they have reached, making these the new normal. Kenyans, we have shown we can. But will we?