Austin Bukenya: The day I argued my anti-exams case before Chief Justice, and won

I have been pondering the case of a 56-year old Chinese millionaire who has been sitting, and failing, his university entrance examination twenty-seven times. He will probably try again soon. It appears that, apart from his admirable determination, sitting and failing this examination has become his way of life.

Wonders, however, will never cease. They will only increase. I remember telling you that I first heard this from the late Cecil Miller, Kenya’s Chief Justice in the early 1980s. The Kiswahili version of the saying is: ukistaajabu ya Musa, utayaona ya Firauni (even as you marvel at Moses’ miracles, you will see those of Pharaoh). You notice the scriptural allusion here.

So, as I was wondering what keeps Liang Shi, the Chinese candidate going, I heard the startling story from Karen that some candidates for a very important professional qualification have to struggle for as long as fifteen years of retakes before they can satisfy their examiners.

In such cases, one cannot help wondering where the problem lies. Is it with the candidates, with the examiners or with the examination itself?

You see, in their assessment techniques, educationists have what they call a “probability curve” (I believe). Basically, common wisdom and experience suggests that in any given sample of candidates, there will be a small percentage which will be excellent or very good.

At the other end, there will be a comparable percentage of those who are weak or downright poor. The bulk of the sample will probably be in the middle of the curve, ranging between average and good competence.

An assessment pattern in which most of the candidates either flop or shine, or cluster around the “average” line, inevitably demands queries about the candidates, the assessors or the tests. The examples we have mentioned above of strange happenings around examinations hint at their problematic nature as instruments of assessment. Can they do clear and indisputable justice to candidates?

The recent developments around examinations, or my awareness of these developments, have reminded me of my long-standing reservations about them.

Maybe I should hasten to say that there is nothing personal about my doubts. Indeed, examinations have generally favoured me. Did I tell you about my French teacher in Dar who popped out of an examiners’ meeting to come and whisper to me, “Tu as passé un très bon examen” (you’ve done very well in the exam)?

But my doing consistently well in conventional examinations has not lessened my dissatisfaction with them as a measure of my ability or that of any other candidate. Curiously, my first public statement against examinations came within a staged event when I had to argue my case before the Chief Justice, more than a year before I joined university.

Famous Nigerian jurist, Sir (Egbert) Udo Udoma, Q. C., Uganda’s first African Chief Justice (1963-69) had graciously agreed to preside over the finals of the national high schools debating contest, where I was representing my school, Namilyango College, as the lead proposer.

Our opponents were Kings’ College, our perennial rivals in every field of cocurricular endeavour. They were led by Tom Omara, a brilliant budding scholar, who later authored The Exodus, the famous play about Luo migrations.

Motion

The topic for the debate finals was: “Examinations should be abolished”. I cannot remember much of what I said in my proposition of the motion. But I recall the vim and vigour with which I went about it.

I guess what mattered most to us in those days was not so much the depth of thought as the rhetorical brilliance of our presentations. Anyway, the upshot of it was that the Chief Justice pronounced me and my team winners of the finals.

I ended up as a national hero of sorts, and my oratorical prowess probably contributed to my getting a job as a newsreader at the then-budding Uganda Television station. More importantly, my reputation as a debater made many people assume, when I went Dar es Salaam instead of Makerere, that I would read Law. Yet the real reason for my opting for Dar was that the College there had the best combination of Linguistics and French, on which I had set my mind.

But I am digressing. The subject of examinations was to occupy me seriously as I delved into educational theory and practice. As a career teacher, especially of the liberal arts, I always agonised over the marking and grading of my students’ work for a number of reasons.

One of these is that, in most of our disciplines, there are very few clear-cut “right” or “wrong” answers. How then do you determine who gets an A, a B or an F? You may have heard the crazy joke that when we, harassed lecturers, are overwhelmed with scripts, we just throw the whole bunch up into the air. Those that fall in front of us will get A, those on the right will get B, those on the left end up with C, and those behind us, well, well!

Pressure

Crazy jokes apart, however, the pressure and demand on the examiner to be empathetic and fair is almost indescribably heavy. When I assess a literary essay, for example, I look for the candidate’s engagement with the subject (e.g. knowledge and insight into a text), systematic thought process and clarity of expression. I do not know how this would apply to matters like “Probate and Administration” in Law.

The strongest argument against relying on single-shot final examinations, however, is that they are very narrow tests of the knowledge and experience covered over a properly planned course of study. Add to that the undeniable influence of external factors, like a candidate’s health or emotional state, and you begin to realise how “chancy” the whole business of examinations can be.

This may be one of the reasons for the increasing belief in and resort to continuous assessment as a more reliable measure of knowledge and competence.

- Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and [email protected]