Every secondary school has a dead line for form four syllabus coverage in 2025. For most, it is Friday 30th of May.

But really, is the problem content retention of students or the syllabus coverage of teachers?

Early this year I was invited to address candidates in a certain school in coast region, they had a mean score of 1.7 in KCSE 2024. I asked the principal which month they cleared form four syllabus in 2024. He replied and said that they cleared it mid May 2024.
Two weeks ago I spoke to form fours in a certain school in western Kenya. They had a mean of 9.4 in 2024 KCSE despite the fact that some teachers cleared syllabus the last week of July 2024.

One school covered syllabus 6 months before KCSE but got 1.7. The other only had 3 months of revision and had 9.7 in KCPE. What brought the difference?

It is not about how fast you clear the syllabus, it is about how fast the students retain the content. During the first staff meeting after KCSE results are out, if we dropped, we always ask God very many questions. ‘God, why? God, we cleared syllabus on time. We taught. We were in class teaching from early morning till late evening. God, we revised. We went for benchmarking. We did everything right, but somehow, God, we have dropped by -1.’.

The reason why many schools are not realising their full potential in terms of academic performance is because they focus more on syllabus coverage and forget content retention.

In most of these schools, students don’t have time to go through their work. Students don’t have enough time for studies. Students wake up at 4:30AM. From 5AM to 6AM, a teacher is in class covering syllabus. From 6:30AM to 7:30AM, another teacher is in class to cover syllabus. As usual, from 8AM to 4PM, we have 10 normal lessons for syllabus coverage.
From 5PM to 6PM, before supper, a teacher is in class to cover syllabus. From 7PM to 9PM, after supper, other two teachers are in class to clear syllabus.

With all honesty, when do the students study? What time do they go through their work? In such a school, any little time students have, they are doing assignments. The students don’t study at all.

The biggest mistake most schools make is, they focus more on contact hours than content hours. Contact hours is time of teaching and content hours is time of learning. In other words, contact hours is time of syllabus coverage while content hours is time of content retention. In the above example, daily, such a school has 11 hours 40 minutes contact hours and only 30 minutes content hours.

My Biology teacher taught me that digestion of food starts in the mouth through chewing where enzyme salivary amylase helps in the breakdown. In the same wavelength, without loss of meaning, retention of content comes through studying a particular concept in a repetitive manner.

There is no student who can retain content without going through teacher’s work again and again unless that student is a genius of some sort.

Now, don’t get me wrong, for the students to retain the content the teachers must cover syllabus first. The problem is that we cover more than what they can retain. We spend all the available time for syllabus coverage, when are they retaining? Actually, the assumption is ‘Let’s keep teaching, wataelewa mbele during revision’. So we bombard them with content that they just write but never study. That’s why in the exams they do poorly because they don’t prepare for it.

Lack of studying leads to lack of mastery which leads to lack of retention which leads to lack of delivery which leads to blank spaces and eventually leads to Ds and Es.

Many schools spend all their money on sharpening the axe, they don’t care if the tree will come down or not. Many focus on syllabus coverage, they don’t follow up to see if it was retained on not. In the staff briefs, since 1989, the main agenda is syllabus coverage, but nobody mentions content retention. I’d rather clear my syllabus three months before KCSE and my students retained it than clear it 7 months before KCSE and they don’t retain anything.

If you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always gotten. To get the results that you’ve never gotten, you must do things that you’ve never done.

Create a balance between syllabus coverage and content retention because content retention is the only missing link between what you got in KCSE 2024 and target of KCSE 2025.

To God Be The Glory.

By Mr Sam VIDAMBU (0743480435).

Vidambu is a professional academic mentor with over 5,000 high schools in Kenya running his academic programs.
His Academic Mentorship Programs are about content mastery skills, content retention techniques, content delivery approaches, proper revision strategies, proven reading cultures, practical study habits, target setting, among other great topics.
He is a Trainer of Principals during KESSHA conferences and teachers.
He is the President of Global Student Mentorship Center, He is an author, and a Tutor.
To Have Vidambu launch the Candidates Academic Mentorship Programs in your school and be a Class Mentor kindly call/text/whatsapp 0743480435 (Sam Vidambu).
He has physical individualised holiday programs. To mentor your child on academic excellence whatsapp him 0743 4804