Grade 4 and Class 8 students prepare for KNEC’s assessment
After many months of the corona-enforced holiday, students in class 8 and grade 4 are set to sit for an assessment examination in the coming week.
The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) released guidelines for the tests that headteachers of primary schools will manage.
The other learners in classes that have not reported yet to schools because the ministry is yet to recall them, will undergo assessment once they return to schools in order to evaluate how prepared they are to continue with learning in a crash program aimed at recovering the time lost during the coronavirus pandemic.
The government closed all learning institutions in March in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus to uncontrollable levels.
Every school will be responsible for handing out the tests to students. Besides, the government has received the support of the Global Partnership for Education.
“It is important to establish the entry behavior of our children after schools reopened,” KNEC acting chief executive officer Mercy Karogo said in the guidelines KNEC provided.
KNEC has informed sub-county directors of education to direct headteachers to download the assessment tools, administer, score, and upload the results to the KNEC portal. The deadline for uploading the results of the assessment has been set for November 6.
Class teachers will help in the assessments that examiners will base on content the learners had covered before schools closed in March.
KNEC has directed teachers to allow learners to complete tests regardless of the time allocated. Scoring of the test will commence immediately and heads of schools will provide the guides.
“The assessments are formative and teachers are expected to communicate the results to individual learners and their respective parents at the end of the assessment exercise,” said Dr. Karogo.
The intention of handing out the assessments is to determine whether there are any learning gaps at the national level and the effect of the pandemic on learning with the view to inform policy on what interventions KNEC or the Ministry of Education should implement.
KNEC will not allow anyone to use assessments for ranking or comparing schools.
Education experts feel that a long absence from schools results in a loss of learning.
The government closed schools since March for a period of more than seven months and though some have been offering virtual lessons, not all students were able to access it. This situation also applies to public schools as most of them did not offer online learning and therefore did not undergo any kind of curriculum instruction.
No funds Released
Headteachers have faced challenges when downloading and printing tools to use in the assessment. Many teachers administered it like a traditional examination and as such got it all wrong.
The government has not released any money to cover downloading, printing, and uploading the assessment.
KNEC will provide appropriate tools for special needs and disabled learners following the stage-based pathway.
Schools will assess Classes 7 and 8 subjects while classes 5 and 6 will take on Mathematics, English, Kiswahili, and Science.
Grade Four Pupils will tackle English, Kiswahili, Mathematics, Science, Environmental Studies, and Technology.
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