admin
THE Form One entrance tests have over the years been shrouded in controversy and drawn mixed feelings from many quarters in the country. While others have praised schools for coming up with the entrance tests, some have been of the feeling that they were a money spinning venture driven by unscrupulous school authorities out to milk desperate parents of their hard earned cash.
However, it seems the issue has been laid to rest as on Friday the Government announced that it has banned the entrance tests. In announcing the ban, the Government said it took the move because most school heads were using the entrance tests to raise cash and not to properly screen the pupils.
The ban comes a few weeks before most secondary schools were set to conduct the tests in which various amounts of non-refundable fees are demanded from prospective pupils.
In announcing the ban, the Acting Secretary for Primary and Secondary Education Ministry, Mr Rogers Sisimayi said:
“The policy position of the ministry is very clear. Schools are supposed to enrol Form One pupils on the basis of their Grade Seven results. What is the purpose of Grade Seven examinations if they are not used for Form One entrance? We communicated with schools through the normal channels and that is in our written circulars.”
Mr Sisimayi also said schools were fleecing parents of their hard earned cash by turning entrance tests into business, adding that children from low-income families could not afford the prohibitive fees charged for entrance examinations, thereby widening the social gap.
We could not agree more with Mr Sisimayi on that as we have also over the years observed that the entrance tests had become another evil of making money by the schools.
We say so because schools were inviting thousands of pupils for the examination only to offer places to a few.
In some instances some schools were said to be inviting between 500 and 2 500 pupils when in actual fact there would be places for just 120.
The schools would be charging between $20 and $40 per pupil. What an easy way of making money!
To buttress the point that the entrance tests were a money spinning venture the results were never made public while teachers were said to be paid handsomely for marking.
Mr Sisimayi also warned the schools that defying the Government directive would come with its own consequences, saying defiant schools would be dealt with accordingly.
It is against this background that we commend the Government for coming up with such a crucial decision as we believe it will bring order to the enrolment of pupils to secondary schools and save parents from paying through the nose just to get a place for their beloved children.
The entrance tests, besides sounding like a parallel education process, were also contributing to the cost of education in the process further burdening the already suffering parents.
Intelligent but financially disadvantaged children were also alienated from the country’s education system by the schools.
We hope that the school authorities will understand that they have no one to blame for the situation they find themselves in; they invited it upon themselves through their unrealistic charges.
However, we also want to take this opportunity to call upon the Government to come up with proper guidelines on how the Form One pupils would be enrolled, as leaving the issue hanging in the air will bring more confusion to the education sector.
We are not comfortable with the fact that the schools should wait for the Grade Seven results that are traditionally released at the beginning of December. We say so because parents need to properly plan for their children while there would be still time to avoid running out of budget.
A lot of resources are needed for pupils going to Form One and if parents start looking for places in December then there would be chaos.
The Government should clear the air on the issue and maybe allow schools to recruit using the Grade Seven mid-year examinations and the Grade Six end of year report to avoid panic that might characterise the enrolment of Form Ones.
Online Reporter