Why inadequate sleep is a predisposing factor for cheating in exams

Students follow a lesson. They are most alert when they get adequate sleep, but are tempted to cheat in examinations when they feel they are not prepared for them.

Former Principal of Alliance Girls High School Dorothy Kamwilu banned early morning preps at the school a few days after settling down as the head of the school.

She said this during a brainstorming session on cheating in national examinations when the then Cabinet Secretary for Education Dr Fred Matiang’i held a caucus of principals of national schools at a hotel in Nairobi in 2016.

The session was among many others the ministry held to restore the credibility and integrity in the administration of national examinations—at the backdrop of audacious cheating in examinations in 2015.

Kamwilu said that she noticed, when she was newly posted at the school, that students looked tired and dozy during the morning sessions when they should be alert at the break of the day’s school programmes. She connected the fatigue and drowsiness to shortened sleeping time the students had.

“The students used to be in class by 5.00am for the morning preps and under the weekly supervision of two teachers,” I recall the principal as saying, adding that they needed to wake up much earlier to be in class by 5.00am.

She said the ban on the 5.00am preps meant that the students started having sufficient sleep, waking up at 6.00am, preparing themselves, and being in classes to prepare for the day’s tuition.

Fellow principals proffered other reasons for cheating in national examinations. However, I found sleep deprivation as a factor in education not only interesting.

“What is the correlation between waking up early to ensure learners are in class by 5.00am and cheating in the examinations?” I asked the former principal when I had the opportunity to interact with her, immediately upon her deployment to the Ministry of Education headquarters at Jogoo House early last year.

She explained that when you force children to be in class by 5.00am, they are forced to wake an hour or so earlier. It means they wake up when they have not had sufficient sleep.

“And so, they simply doze off in the classroom that early hour, not able to study as expected,” she said.

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The most unsettling aspect of this regime, she noted, is that learners don’t concentrate during the official teaching hours—between 8.00am and 3.30pm—the official instructional hours the Ministry of Education designates in the Basic Education Regulations, 2015.

When you cut sleeping time for children, you affect them the entire day. There is little or no quality learning the students ever have at their disposal throughout the time. Without concentration and without the attention this requires, the absorption capacity of learners is predictably low.

Kamwilu says that effective learning happens when children are relaxed and wide awake, without the fatigue shortened sleeping hours occasion.

The former principal opines that the instructional time the Ministry of Education has prescribed in the Basic Education Regulations 2015, and the space the school provides throughout the school calendar is more than enough to thoroughly understand the syllabus.

The need for sufficient sleep for learners in the school system in Kenya is not whimsical.

Sleep is essential for the mental well-being of a human being and more so a student. It improves their ability to focus, concentrate, and perform.

The same principle applies to all occupations or tasks. Drivers, employees, including teachers, including those who wake up to supervise students at unholy hours need sufficient sleep, too. Sleep doesn’t know who is a student and who is a teacher.

How much sleep children need to learn without undue constraints and inhibitions?

According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, children between 6-12 should have between 9 to 12hours per 24 hours while adolescents between ages 13-18 years should have between 8 to10 hours per 24 hours. Practically speaking, it means that children between ages 6-12 should have sleep of not less than 9 hours while their counterparts in the 13-18 age group should have sleep of not less than 8 hours.

The recommended hours for sleep, particularly for students in high school, is within the sleeping time or hours the Ministry of Education stipulates in Section 84 of the Basic Education Regulations 2015. The Regulation provides that 9.30 p.m. to 6.00 a.m. shall be bedtime for boarding schools from Monday to Friday; and 6.00 a.m. to 8.00 a.m. supervised routine activities pending the commencement of official instructional time at 8.00 a.m. to 3.30 p.m.

Policymakers on education and the stakeholders with whom it developed this piece of delegated legislation recognized the place of sleep in the education of children.

Learning is taxing. It taxes the mind and the body. Mind and body must have time for rest for them to learn effectively. It was the former education minister, the late Mutula Kilonzo, who, while disapproving holiday tuition in 2012, said that children cannot learn endlessly.

How is this connected with the temptation to cheat in an examination?

Academic performance often suffers when the student is unable to focus. As a result, instead of being excited for the new school day, term school calendar, many feel fatigued.

Most reach the school level and national examination season ill prepared to face the examinations. This is a mother of all absurdities.

The learners spend more time in class throughout the eight and four years getting an education ahead of KCPE and KCSE respectively, and then fall prey to prior access of ‘examination materials or information without approval.’

The access is, in some cases, on the students’ own volition (without the tacit or active assistance of the school) or with the assistance of unscrupulous adults, some of whom happen to be, of all people, teachers!

Sleep deprivation may or may not be the devil that tempts students and schools to cheat in national examinations. However, it certainly undermines optimal teaching and learning. The fatigue it creates affects alertness and attention children need to follow a programme of instruction—through listening to teachers and reading.

By Kennedy Buhere

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