Completely dumb.

Not unlike saying that if you own a personal car you should never be admitted into a bus. How smart!

On a serious note, however, this problem of disparity is a serious one. A great solution that's not too hard to imagine is to turn government primary schools into paragons of excellence. Much like national secondary schools are perceived to be - whether they really are is a separate debate. But this is idealistic at best and self deception at worst. The willingness (and very possibly the ability) to make it happen is not there. And even if it was, the solution would take years to implement. It therefore behooves stakeholders to think creatively about an acceptable short-term solution. These fellows may be as crazy as your village loony, but at least they have tried.

I studied my O-levels in a provincial school; then proceeded to a national school (one of the best, but do I say?) for A-levels.

In terms of facilities (labs, library, food etc), the provincial school was much better than the national one. In fact, I remember going for two terms without a chemistry teacher and the form-6 ahead of us had no maths teach for a whole year when they were in form-5.

But still, the national school did much better in KACE than my former provincial school. Reason: we were all very bright students from the word go (but again, do I say).

Mr Gachukia, the director of Riara, once did a comparison of average entry marks and average exit marks for students in district, provincial and national schools. He found that students of national schools exited with lower averages than they entered while those in district schools scored about two grades above what they had entered with.

Granted: these are two different exams, but it is something to think about.

I also exited the national school with lower marks than those I had entered with... Makes you think, doesn't it?