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African Education News - One Million Kenyan Children Still Out of School
One million children are still out of school in Kenya two years to the deadline set by government to realize Universal Primary Education by 2015. The report "Education for all monitoring report 2012" by UNESCO notes that while this is almost half the number in 1999, it is still the ninth highest in the world.
The report notes that even those who are lucky to access basic education, primary education is not of sufficient quality to ensure that all children can learn the basics.
"Among young men aged 15?29 years who had left school after six years of schooling, 6% were illiterate and 26% were semi?literate. The figures are even worse for young women, with 9% illiterate and 30% semi?literate after being in school for six years," the report says.
The proportion of semi-literate or illiterate women after six years of schooling has worsened in recent years: in 2003, 24% were in this situation, compared with 39% in 2008.
Most hit areas are the arid areas where most children have no access to education facilities like schools, and where there are schools there is lack of basic facilities like classrooms and teachers.
"The poor, and girls most of all, have far less chance of making it to school. In 2008, in Nairobi, almost all children from rich households had been to school, whether boy or girl. But 55% of poor girls living in the North-East had never been to school, with 43% of poor boys in the region in the same situation. This is, however, an improvement since 2003, when 71% of poor girls and 56% of poor boys in the North-East had never been to school," notes the report.
The report says although the abolition of secondary school fees reduced the costs for many poor families, indirect costs are still twelve to twenty times as much as the monthly income of parents in rural areas, leaving secondary school out of reach for the poorest households.
"The US$164 that is allocated to compensate secondary schools for having abolished school fees is ten times the amount per pupil annually received by primary schools. Only a minority of children from poor rural households or urban slums make it to secondary school. The increased investment would be more equitably distributed if it were geared towards remote rural areas, slum settlements and pastoralist communities.
The report praise Kenya for showing strong commitment to funding education
"The economic downturn does not seem to have adversely affected education spending: 6.7% of Kenya's GNP was spent on education in 2010, increasing from the 5.4% spent in 1999. This strong spending helped increase the primary net enrolment ratio from 62% in 1999 to 83% in 2009."
The reports further says compared with other sub-Saharan African countries, a relatively small proportion of the education budget is funded by aid in Kenya, around 4%.
Jubilee manifesto on Education
The Jubilee coalition is promising that Kenyan children and youth will get affordable, quality and relevant education that would make them competitive players in the world economy.
To achieve this, the Jubilee manifesto says they will increase education funding by one per cent each year so that by 2018, it reaches 32 per cent of government spending. They also aim to increase the number of schools in disadvantaged areas, restrict class sizes to a maximum of 40 and recruit 40,000 more teachers.
This you can put in bullets in a corner somewhere.
Challenges facing FPE
• The Free Primary Education in Kenya is not constitutionally protected. This makes its policy subject to political interference and its future uncertain. Education is a human right that every child must benefit from, and therefore needs to get constitutional recognition and protection
• There are still many children who are not going to school, and instead are engaged in communal/child labour to generate income for the family
• Some schools have experienced over-enrollment, putting a serious strain on the limited available facilities
• There seems to be lack of capacity and preparedness on the side of teachers to handle issues of pupil discipline after the ban on corporal punishment.
Teacher shortage in many schools is causing heavy workloads for teachers and poor teacher attention to individual pupils. The teacher/student ratio is still too high for effective learning. This leads especially to lack of personalized attention for slow learners.
• Inadequate instructional and learning materials due to overcrowded classes
• Lack of support for Early Childhood Education (ECD) has led to the transfer of early childhood lessons to the primary section because many parents are not willing to pay any money for ECD while FPE is free.
• Wastage on the part of the schools which have continued to purchase items like text books over the years, despite having achieved the necessary ratio of books per child.
• There are no transparent procurement guidelines for schools. Often teachers and their business associates end up as suppliers fuelling conflict of interest in the management of funds.
• Corruption by head teachers and systematic attempts to lock out from SMC community members that are well informed to question or are critical of their management practices.
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Link to original article: One Million Kenyan Children Still Out of School - New Star
FOSTER PARENTING AND CHILDREN INTERGRATION TO THE COMMUNITIES ALSO ENCOURAGED WHAT FUTURE DOES A CHILD HAVE AFTER SPENDING ALL HIS LIFE IN THE HOMES?BETTER AND QUALITY EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS FORMED AT THE HOMES IS ENCOURAGED AND PEOPLE WILLING TO FOSTER THE CHILDREN .TO CATER FOR THEIR WELL BEING IS ENCOURAGED.
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