The Kenyan Ministry of Education is due to release the results of Kenya’s high school national examinations (KCSE). This year the government will text the results directly to student’s cell phones – for those who subscribed – mitigating the need to actually visit one’s school or the KNEC headquarters to find out about one’s grades.

I expect that the usual suspects – subsidized national schools like Mang’u, Starehe, Alliance Girls, Kenya High etc – will top the charts. Although public and therefore subsidized by the government, the overwhelming percentage of the students in these schools usually come from private primary schools. Most public primary schools have since gone to the dogs due to the ill planned introduction of free primary education by the Kibaki Administration. And as in most years, I expect to hear a lot of noise from members of civil society (whose kids go to private primary schools, then public high schools and universities) to complain about the unfair education system that continues to reproduce existing inequalities. Silence on this issue from these same civil society types will then set in in about a week or so, until the next time the ministry releases exam results.