The Effect of Ranking on Secondary Schools in Kakamega, Kenya

📘 The ranking of schools and students in national examinations is meant to encourage positive competition. In addition, the public posting of examination outcomes is meant to hold schools and teachers accountable for the students’ performance on standardized examinations. However, ranking has been known to create the impression that, there are good and bad schools in Kenya. The top performing schools are regarded as effective schools while low performing are regarded as ineffective. This belief influences enrolment, promotion rates and performance trends in different schools as revealed by this study. Both the teachers and students felt that ranking should be improved and thus called for a system of assessment that encompassed all the aspects instead of focusing on academic performance only. This would ensure that ranking of schools and students did not glorify academic achievement at the expense of talent and other virtues.