KENYA: Teachers Blamed For Girls’ Poor Performance

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Judith Achieng'

NAIROBI, Oct 18 1997 (IPS) - Josephine Onunga, 21, had wanted to become a medical doctor after finishing her education. Now, instead of practicing in a hospital, she sits in the corner of a small shabby office with heaps of paperwork on her wooden desk.

“I never anticipated that one day I would end up just as a mere clerk,” she grouses.

Onunga saw the chance to fulfill her life-long dreams slip through her hands at St Theresa’s girls secondary school here, where she sat her final examinations.

“My mathematics teacher had made the subjct too difficult to understand. As a result, 29 of us in a class of 35 failed to pass the subject in our final Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination,” she says. Mathematics is a key requirement for studying medicine in Kenya.

“My teacher’s attitude was terrible. Often I could tell that he hated us, because we were girls. He made us all fear and dislike mathematics,” she adds bitterly.

Onunga’s case is not unique. Most girls in Kenyan schools often obtain lower test scores than boys, especially on science and technical subjects.

The latest figures released by the Ministry of Education here show that only 124 out of the 735 students who were admitted in the University of Nairobi’s faculty of medicine last year are females. In the faculty of architecture, girls selected made up only 17 of the 176 admitted.

A recent report, published by the New York-based Population Council, says girls’ progress in Kenyan schools is being impeded by teachers who undermine and believe that they are less capable than boys.

“Teachers described girls as stupid and lazy … They allocated menial chores to girls and leading tasks to boys, and even where girls performed nearly as well on exams, teachers awarded twice as many prizes to boys,” says the report.

The researchers also reported witnessing boys bullying girls outside classrooms, teasing them, blocking their movements and even grabbing their breasts with teachers turning a blind eye.

“It is a problem that stems from male chauvanism, which has been the hallmark of African culture,” Shem Oirere, a teacher here explains. “Even governments consider them (women) as the ‘weaker sex’ who can only qualify for higher education if their entry marks are lowered.”

The researchers said they had interviewed nearly 800 students and their parents. They also visited 36 primary schools attended by more than 80 percent of the adolescents in the sample.

They said the circumstances in Kenyan schools just did not seem friendly to girls. “It seems clear that girls might simply not want to remain in this type of environment,” adds the report.

By bringing in the teachers’ “hostility” towards girls, the Council has shed some light on the current social debate about girls’ failure to do well in school. It could also explain the reason for teenage pregnancies often associated with school drop- outs. The ministry of education says some 10,000 girls drop out of both primary and secondary schools each year.

“And, at least 51 percent of school-age girls are out of school,” says Eddah Gachukia, the director of the Forum for African Women Educationists (FAWE-Kenya).

To curb this trend, Kenya’s director of education Sammy Kyungu, says the government has decided to step in to end gender bias in schools and to eliminate all forms of discrimination against girls.

On discrimination, Kyungu says the ministry of education has this year increased its expenditure on primary education by 10 percent, pushing its annual budget figure to 67 percent. Part of the money will be used to rehabilitate girl drop outs. Kenya spends 5.7 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education.

The government has also stated its intention to introduce a bursary programme for girls at the primary school level in rural and low-income areas.

It also plans to gradually remove the sexual stereotyping of gender roles in educational materials. “We want to ensure that girls enrol and perform well and manage to stay in school,” he says.

The gender ratio of female to male students in educational institutions in Kenya has generally improved in recent years, although significant discrepancies remain at higher levels of education, according to a new publication ‘Women of the World: Laws and Policies Affecting Their Reproductive Lives, Anglophone Africa’.

The publication, launched here jointly by the International Federation of Female Lawyers (FIDA-Kenya) and the New York-based Centre for Reproductive Law and Policy in August, says in primary schools, the female-to-male ratio has increased from 7 to 100 in 1972, to 97 to 100 in 1992.

And, female-to-male enrollment ratios in secondary schools rose from 45 to 100 in 1972 to 75 to 100 in 1992, while the ratio for first-year intake in universities dropped from 42 to 1100 in 1989 to 37 to 1000 in 1992, the report adds.

“Girls’ access to education is not limited by legalisation, but rather by limited opportunities due in part to customs, and social attitudes…” says the publication.