"KCPE ENGLISH COMPOSITION PAPER (2011)"

Dear Leader,

Allow me first of all to greet you with my sincere salutations, and thereafter quickly hasten to add my sister’s – she sent me with warm greetings to you. We are both doing fine enjoying the relative freedom after both of us sat for and completed our national examinations successfully last week. My sister was doing her KCSE while I – her younger sibling - was squaring it out with the monstrous Mr. KCPE, and I am happy to report I feel elated like David after felling Goliath. We all are very confident that come 2012,  we will have enough reasons to celebrate and make everyone proud of us, including you of course.

My sister and I were expecting a personal good luck message, or even a success card from you, but we understand it might have escaped your mind because of your ever-busy schedule. That is not the point of writing this letter though, we will pass nonetheless. Far from it, my sister and I have decided to write in order to remind you, our leader, of a few things we deem important and worth your consideration before and after our exam results are out in order to avoid the routine embarrassment of yesteryears.

As a devoted reader of the newspapers, you will remember there are stories that always make headlines at a certain period of the year. For example, when it rains in the Western part of our nation, the issue of Budalangi floods and how much property has been lost and people drowned becomes the signature tune of every news item for days. Likewise, when Ewaso Nyiro river bursts its banks, as it routinely does.  Year in, year out. Even next year, and the one after, we know these events will surely occur. And the irony is that this ‘excess’ water has never been enough to rid the people from Nyiro environs from constant draught and famine all these years! Rather paradoxical, isn’t it?

My sister suggested and insisted we use this analogy because, sadly, it parallels what has become common trend in the education sector for years now. Each year, thousands of students countrywide sit for the national examinations in a kufa na kupona duel but when the results are out, their future dreams predicting bright futures are suddenly shattered like a glass that has fallen on a rock. Our leaders and the government have times without number failed, and I dare say terribly, to plan ahead and put measures in place to ensure that all students who do well in their exams do not miss admission to the next level.

My sister and I submit that armed with the full data beforehand, the government should have planned well ahead for these future leaders – your successors that is. We shouldn’t take pride, as a people, in reporting about property and lives lost through floods every blessed year. Equally, we should be embarrassed to report yearly of tens if not hundreds of thousands of our frustrated children who could not be admitted to the next level of school because either vacancies were few, or that their parents or guardians could not afford (some schools are still charging astronomical fees , remember). We have, as a country, all that it takes to mitigate such situations once and for all. If only we spent more time and resources on solving problems, than lamenting and whining on our inability to do the same, we could have changed these challenges to be our strengths.

Sir, with the current, ostensibly uncaring, leadership, I will not be surprised to hear the government blaming it all on the sky-rocketing of commodity prices, the draught that has drained parents’ pockets and the weakening of the shilling against the American dollar! An unthinking and insensitive mortal might even blame it on the Al-Shabaab in Somali. But if truth be told, these are not the key contributors to the menace. Instead,  the bulk of it has to do with lack of planning on the part of our leadership. It is not an emergency that over seven hundred thousand of us sat for KCPE this year. The government ought to have seen this coming eight years ago when we all enrolled in school for the first time. Same case applies to my sister (seated next to me as I write this); they have been in high school for the last four years and its no secret the government was aware of the fact.

Sir, “…education is the key to a better life.” You once told us on the assembly ground during your one time visit to our school in the eight years that I have been there despite the fact that your palatial upcountry home is only two miles from our school fence. If it behoves you, would you please look into this issue and address it amicably? My sister and I, and our colleagues who sat for their examinations with us will greatly appreciate.

We hope to make you all happy and prod when the exam results are out. Also, would you please mind coming to our school to celebrate the results with us regardless? Going by the trend, the results are to be released anywhere after Boxing Day and before New Year. We would be more than honored if you chose to attend. Kindly treat this as our formal invitation (Psss because our headmaster can not write an official letter – that is what one English teacher said in the staffroom one day.) Besides, you are an old student of our school, or so the rumor in the village claims.

Thank you so much and God bless you abundantly.

Sincerely,

Concened Students.

NB: Sorry, my sister says don’t forget to bring the press people with you when you come so that our school too might appear on T.V during evening news that day. It will be a great day for our entire village to see them too. Try and convince them that other schools outside Nairobi Metropolitan celebrate their exam results by jubilating and carrying their best students shoulder high like the rest. You can even offer them a ride in your SUV car since it can comfortably cruise on our ‘impassable’ roads during this rainy season. Bye, Sir.