Of performance and a reward from the State

A graduation ceremony. It’s not clear why, given the same opportunities as fresh graduates, men tend to rise faster than women to positions of authority. The boards of the largest, most influential firms are men-dominated; so is the political leadership at all levels. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The suggestion there is that, as a province, the government funds you basically according to how you perform.
  • Kenya’s ministry of Education might already have officially called upon Bungoma to continue to set the national pace.

Is performance the criterion number one of the government’s educational funding of the provinces?

The Daily Nation strongly suggested it as follows in a headline on Wednesday: “Bungoma sets pace for other counties as it tops revenue list.”

The suggestion there is that, as a province, the government funds you basically according to how you perform.

If so, then we must congratulate Western Province. For, according to a Nation story on Wednesday, Western receives more of the government’s educational funding than does any other province.

From that story, we learned, moreover, that, as a result, Western has more university graduates than has any other of Kenyan provinces.

TOPMOST IN ACADEMICS

Western is among our country’s topmost academic provinces.

Only Central and Nyanza might challenge Western for that position.

The idea was suggested by a headline on page 21 of the Daily Nation on June 1, 2018, as follows:
The idea would seem to be that Bungoma received what it did because of its excel-lent performance from year to year.

No, that was not an example of what a famous Western European analyst of the world’s print media would have dismissed as “… the pseudo-facts of newspaper headlines …”

No, nothing was wrong with the language of the statement that “Bungoma sets pace for other counties as it tops revenue list.”

FUNDING

And, no, Bungoma’s excellence is not in academic performance. From the story, we learned that the “excellence” referred only to the amount of funding that Bungoma’s institutions receive.

Indeed, nothing whatsoever is the matter even with the logic of the journalist’s statement.

For it is only because, in terms of performance, Bungoma has topped the list of certain counties that the area might also be expected to set the pace even for the whole nation.

What will have appalled any language-conscious reader is the fact that at least one piece of information was offered a whole twice in the same linguistic breath.

UNNECESSARY REPETITION

On the second mention, into the bargain, that information has been stated as if it is a consequence of the first.

Any intelligent reader would have seen the completely unnecessary repetition and been appalled by it.

Quite encouragingly, however, Kenya’s ministry of Education might already have officially called upon Bungoma to continue to set the national pace.

In other words, as time comes on, Western Province — which already is one of Kenya’s academic hubs — might be expected to maintain its brilliant educational performance and even to better it, thus becoming the nation’s educational exemplar, a position in which Western is usually challenged only by Central and Nyanza provinces.

As a consequence, moreover, the ministry of Education might even have decided to supply that institution with suitable additional educational materials and personnel enough to enable it to maintain its excellence and, into the bargain, even to better it.

Philip Ochieng is a retired journalist. [email protected]