After longtime covid-19 affecting all sectors including education, the students of Mount Kenya University were happy to be back, but unfortunately they are in dilemma of not knowing when exams are scheduled and not knowing whether they had to go back to their home provinces after its unreasonable postponement on Wednesday 14th October 2020.
The students were given announcement by the university that we are allowed to come to the campus to sit for exams of the courses that they attended both face to face and online. They had about two weeks of preparation since the announcement. When they arrived at the campus, well prepared and ready for exams, they were all set in their examination rooms when they heard the announcement to go in the meeting hall for a brief meeting. The meeting was chaired by Deputy Vice Chancellor, Vice Chancellor himself, program leader and a number of lecturers. The main point of the meeting was to announce that Examinations have been postponed.
The students talked to integonews.com that Vice chancellor mentioned that some of the students did not have enough time to revise and it would be unfair to give exams while a particular group is not going to benefit. Asked how long that postponing will last, the leaders refrained themselves from giving more information about that.
How are students negatively affected by that unexpected change?
Some students came from the farthest provinces/districts of the country, they had to rent houses and buy food and all needed stuff to survive within the three weeks that we were expected to stay. These students are in dilemma of not knowing when exams are scheduled, not knowing whether they had to go back to their home provinces and so on. “If this exams period fails us, we are bound to have more pending examinations, which lead to extended time of learning,” the students said.
The students suggestions are that the university should solve whatever problem caused by the postponement of exams and immediately announce to its students the time to sit for exams, in order to avoid greater loss for the students. Secondly, the time for exams must be before the opening of schools because many students of this holiday program are teachers. At last, since students adopted Online learning which is promoted by the REB and that they paid full school fees, they should not be hindered to complete their studies on time.
Mount Kenya University is not friendly to its students and Media
The announcement of this university says that the reason of postponement of the exams is to give chance all students to participate, but it doesn’t explain the help to be given to those who already attended exams and it doesn’t mention the new date of sitting for exams which lead the students to remain in ambiguity.
Trying to know MKU’s reaction on students’ issues, program leader Dr Claire didn’t say but gave us the university secretary phone number for connecting us to the Vice Chancellor or Deputy Vice Chancellor but secretary didn’t provide the service until the time of publishing the story. We tried to call they call center +250785 709 824 in vain.
Mount Kenya University was among universities allowed on 2nd October by the Minister of Education to start with the last level in order to respect the measures in place against Covid-19 .
Noel Mporebuke
