Did you know that the leakage of 1963 Kenya African Preliminary Examinations (KAPE) led to Kenya’s initial expansion of secondary education?
When that exam leaked, nationwide, the cabinet was informed, with the recommendation that the exam should be cancelled and a new one set.
The Cabinet, Jomo Kenyatta presiding, and Oginga Odinga by his side, in their own wisdom; chose not to cancel the exam.
When results were announced, nearly everyone had passed. Many got distinctions.
What followed was mass shortages of spaces to admit the students in the then few good secondary schools when the school year commenced in January 1964.
The government responded by mass construction of new secondary schools. Communities were urged to build schools on their own if they could.
In the end, new schools known as ‘Harambee schools’ emerged out of the phenomenon of the mass leakage of the 1963 KAPE exams.
Something good can surely come out of something bad.
Had that exam not leaked, causing mass passage of the exam, Kenya would have built schools so incrementally.
Exam cheating is as old as the country.
Profound.
Dikembe Disembe is a political researcher and writer
