EDUCATION-KENYA: Shortage of Schools Bites Hard

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Judith Achieng'

NAIROBI, Jan 25 1998 (IPS) - Basic education in Kenya seems to be steadily evolving into a privilege reserved for those who can afford it, rather than a right for all.

The Education Ministry itself has admitted that there are not enough places to go around. It has announced that at least half the students who sat their national primary school examinations will miss places in secondary schools due to limited space.

According to the immediate former Minister for Education, Joseph Kamotho, only 195,778 out of the 431,983 candidates who sat the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) would make it to secondary school this year.

The remaining 236,205 represent a 1.25-percent increase in the number of those who missed secondary school last year. “It is a high rate of wastage that the government will have to address to avoid future crisis,” said Kamotho.

Most secondary schools, spurred by this high demand, have pushed up their admission fees for first form students, drawing complaints from overburdened parents, like Christine Kwamboka, who says she cannot afford to raise the 55,000 shillings her son is required take to his new school for admission by February 4. (1 US dollar = 60 shillings).

“This amount is just unrealistic,” she grouses.

The plight of Kwamboka is shared by the majority of Kenyan parents who find it hard to make ends meet. Official figures show that about 55.6 percent of Kenyan households are poor, making do with an average monthly income of 2,000 shillings.

But while some may complain, there are others willing to pay anything to send their children to good schools. “If a student fails to report within the first week of admission, then we replace him or her immediately,” said one teacher in a high ranking government school here. “There are people who are dying for those chances.”

Currently, the gross enrolment rate in secondary schools in Kenya stands at 29 percent, much lower than that of Mauritius for example, where it is 54 percent.

Even at the level of primary education, there has been a marked decrease in percentages. Primary school enrolment in Kenya increased steadily after independence from Britain in 1963, reaching 97 percent for boys and 93 percent for girls in 1989. It then shrank, however, and by 1996 it was 78.75 percent for boys and 76.5 percent for girls.

The current retention rate in secondary schools is 47 percent for boys and 34 percent for girls. “It is obvious that the unenrolled and the drop-outs are driven into early labour by poverty,” says Benson Oyuga, an education consultant here.

Paradoxically, education occupies the highest position in terms of state spending. Last year, the government increased its expenditure on education from 5.7 to 6.7 percent of GDP.

“This demonstrates the burden and difficulty the government has in changing the policy to free, compulsory and universal education at the basic level,” says Education Director, Sammy Kyungu.

The government of President Daniel arap Moi, however, faces the challenge of curbing the high dropout rates in schools and the diminishing quality of education.

“The government will have to plan for ways of enhancing the capacity of existing schools to accomodate all qualifying students,” says Eddah Gachukia who heads the Forum for African Women Educationists (FAWE)-Kenya chapter.

Gachukia and other educationists feel that with the addition of cultural stereotypes that hamper their progress in education, girls are naturally more disadvantaged by the current shortage of schools and unaffordable fees than boys. “The education of boys makes more sense in Africa because of their automatic role as breadwinners, family heads and their percieved ‘greater intelligence’,” she says.

A report by the United States-based Population Council says even teachers’ attitudes discourage the progress of girls in Kenyan schools. “The circumstances in Kenyan classrooms just dont’ seem friendly to girls,” it says.

The research, which was the first appraisal of adolescent experiences in schools in the developing world, eliminated teenage pregnancies as the major reason for ineffective learning by girls as previously assumed. A similar report which was published last year by FAWE said that circumstances girls are exposed to discourage their progress in education and as a result, 26 million girls drop out of schools in Africa every year.

The report, Girls in African Education Research – Action to Keep Girls in School, also states that girls in Africa are mainly steered towards stereotype subjects such as needlework, nursing and cookery rather than science and technology. “It deflates girl students’ sense of ability to achieve,” it says.

The Kenyan government has pledged to raise to 70 the percentage of primary school leavers selected for secondary schools, and increase the proportion of girls through special bursary schemes by 2010.