EDUCATION-KENYA: Massive Enrolment as Gov’t Abolishes School Fees

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Katy Salmon

NAIROBI , Feb 5 2003 (IPS) - Kihumbuini Primary School, like thousands of others around Kenya, experienced a massive influx of children when school fees were abolished last month. The number of students rose from 600 to 1,000 overnight.

Kihumbuini, one of the city’s largest primary schools, is situated in the sprawling Kangemi slum.

Here, as in slums all over the city, the majority of people are either unemployed or casual workers earning barely enough to survive.

As a result, primary school enrolment in Kenya’s capital city had fallen to just over 50 percent.

Parents wanting to enrol their children at Kihumbuini had to pay an initial fee of 130 U.S. dollars – far beyond the budgets of most Kenyans, who earn less than a dollar a day.

So their children were denied the right to education. Instead, some sold nuts or begged at the side of busy highways to earn a few shillings to help their families. Others stayed at home, helping their parents with domestic chores.

With the introduction of free primary education, all that has changed.

Now, the only start-up expense is buying a uniform, which costs about 25 U.S. dollars, leaving the family with more money to spend on basics like a healthy diet.

”It is a great situation,” enthuses teacher Mary Njoroge.

”The children are coming in knowing that only I need a uniform. Even those who do not have we are really catering for them,” she says.

”The money that was used for school fees is being used for food,” she adds.

Some children are complete beginners. Others are able to pick up where they left off when poverty forced them out of school. 17-year-old George Kamau managed to complete six of the eight primary school grades. But he was forced to drop out when his parents died two years ago. ”I was not in class because I was not having school fees when my parents passed away. I was looking for someone to pay for me,” he explains.

Kamau has now been able to return to school in Standard Seven. ”I think it is very nice,” he says.

With the cost of education so much lower, efforts are even being made to get street-children back into school so that they can look forward to a better future.

At Kihumbuini, the biggest influx has been in the first year, Standard One, where the number of students has tripled.

To cope with the massive intake, teachers have started teaching in shifts, with half the students coming in the morning and the other half in the afternoon.

This has led to some confusion. There are so many new faces it is hard for teachers to make sure that each child attends only one session.

”Before we used to know the names of these children. Right now it’s very hard. You’ll find the same child comes in the morning and the afternoon. To identify that we are having a problem,” says Njoroge.

”It’s only after the child comes to you and says I have not had lunch that you know this child was in the morning session,” she laughs.

Classrooms were too small to fit all the students in. So the teachers decide to throw out the desks and chairs and seat the children on mats, provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

”They have given us all sorts of ideas to make education very simple,” says headmistress Rose Muya.

The school did not have enough money to buy enough exercise books either. So the teachers improvised by making a small blackboard on the wall for each student.

”In case, the child does not have an exercise book, that is not an excuse of not learning. The children are writing on the wallboards,” says another teacher Lucy Kongo.

Kongo thinks this system is even better than the traditional one using exercise books.

”A teacher can have a glance at once and know which child has a problem and therefore can be assisted. The ones who are fast can be given more work. So it is very easy for the teacher to even control many children,” she adds.

Given these pressures, there is concern that the quality of primary education will fall unless substantial funds are pumped in.

Visiting Kihumbuini Primary School, Education Minister George Saitoti sought to reassure students and teachers that the money will be found.

”I want to tell Kenyans that we are not going to relent until every school-going child of primary age is enrolled in the schools. We are going to sustain this project because we believe it is important,” he said.

”Not only because it is the right of every child but because we know in educating the children we are investing in the future of this country,” he added.

The free education pledge was a key factor in the National Rainbow Coalition’s victory in the December elections. So President Mwai Kibaki had to move quickly to fulfil that promise days after being sworn into office, despite having no budget to pay for it.

He plans to pass a supplementary education budget when Parliament re-opens later this month.