Dr Paul Sharp Warns Against Flawed School-Based Assessment

By John Kariuki

Dr Paul Sharp has cautioned that the Kenya National Examinations Council’s School-Based Assessment framework is undermining the vision of the Competency-Based Curriculum. He said that although the curriculum was intended to nurture aptitudes, creativity, and skills through continuous learning, the current assessment system has failed to achieve this goal.

He explained that the SBA, which should serve as the foundation of competency tracking, contributes only 20 percent in the final Grade 10 placement. According to him, this contribution is rendered insignificant by the 60 percent weight of the Grade 9 KJSEA, which entrenches terminal examinations as the primary determinant of a learner’s future. He observed that this imbalance has reduced the SBA to a mere administrative requirement rather than a meaningful diagnostic tool.

Dr Sharp remarked that the most critical flaw lies in the administration of the assessments. He explained that the assessment tools are released weeks before the submission deadlines, leading to their inevitable exposure in the public domain. He said that schools that conduct the tests early may capture authentic learner responses, while those that delay often benefit from leaked content, resulting in inflated scores. He warned that this practice has transformed assessments into rehearsed drills instead of genuine demonstrations of ability.

He further noted that the lack of external invigilation has weakened the credibility of the SBA. He observed that relying entirely on teachers, who are already overburdened, leaves the process open to manipulation. He said that teachers tasked with scoring learners across as many as ten subjects within limited timelines tend to prioritize compliance with deadlines rather than engaging in meaningful qualitative evaluation. In his view, this produces unreliable data that cannot accurately reflect learners’ competencies.

Dr Sharp also highlighted the financial burden imposed on schools and parents by the decentralized requirement to print large volumes of assessment materials. He said that this practice compromises fairness and places struggling schools at a disadvantage, undermining the inclusivity that CBC was designed to uphold.

He called for urgent reforms to restore credibility in the system. He recommended that the SBA contribution to final placement be increased to at least 30 percent, accompanied by a reduction in the weight assigned to the KJSEA. He also urged the inclusion of teacher verified portfolios that would capture creativity, effort, and practical skills beyond numerical scores. He insisted that KNEC must adopt strict and narrow testing windows to prevent exposure of assessment tools and introduce external verification to safeguard objectivity. Additionally, he encouraged the Ministry of Education to centralize or subsidize assessment materials in order to ease the financial burden on schools and parents.

Dr Sharp concluded by asserting that the current SBA regime is failing learners, educators, and the broader educational agenda. He warned that unless urgent reforms are undertaken, the system would continue to generate corrupted data that misguides career pathway identification. He insisted that Kenya cannot afford to let the vision of Competency-Based Education collapse due to poor implementation, declaring that the CBC must succeed and that the SBA must be urgently reformed to make it work.