Women graduands at a local university. Women’s empowerment or not, men are responsible to society, themselves and God for their own choices. Photo/FILE
Poor quality education is eating away Kenya’s skills base, adding a new layer of challenge to the country’s quest for high rate of economic growth and the realisation of a newly industrialised status by 2030.
A new survey of the country’s education system has found that millions of Kenya’s primary school children are graduating without attaining basic numeracy and literacy skills, denying the economy quality human capital it needs to grow.
Almost half of the children in primary schools, including those in upper classes lack basic numeracy and literacy skills, which means that heavy investments that the government has recently made in education have not borne fruit.
This lack of competence at the bottom of the learning ladder is also hurting the performance and credibility of students at higher levels, ultimately diluting the quality of Kenya’s human resource base and competitiveness in a globalised economy.
The outcome of the annual survey is particularly significant because it points to the very little gain the country is making from the billions of shillings it has pumped into free primary education in the past six years.
The programme, which consumes nearly Sh9 billion per year, caught the world’s attention when it opened primary education to millions of children whose parents were too poor to afford school fees.
It has been one of the key legacies of the Kibaki administration that remains popular in all corners of the country.
Thursday's release of the national literacy survey report coincided with concerns by the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) that graduates entering the labour market were of poor quality.
Concerns over the quality of learning come at a time when Kenya is grappling with a skills shortage that is now being seen as one of the major obstacles to the realisation of the country’s development blueprint Vision 2030.
“There is a big mismatch between the skills level of graduates and the market needs yet human capital remains a pillar of our development targets,” said Michael Kahiti, the chief economist at the Planning ministry.
Reports of declining quality of education in Kenyan schools have now prompted some educationists to question the effectiveness of the heavy investment in the sector.
To improve the quality of learning, they say, the government must focus on teacher recruitment, learning materials and inspection.
“There has to be increased accountability that measures the actual learner competencies to boost quality,” said Sara Ruto, an education lecturer at Kenyatta University.
The survey by a group of researchers from local universities under the auspices of Uwezo Kenya, sampled 102,666 students aged between three and 16 in 2,030 schools countrywide.
It found out that only 33 per cent of children in class two can read a paragraph of their level.
A third cannot even read a word. Of every 1000 pupils completing Class Eight, 50 cannot read a Class Two story and 25 per cent of Class Five pupils can hardly read a Class Two paragraph.
A worrying aspect of the study is that pupils countrywide are worse off in mathematics than in any other subject, pointing to the need to relate concepts to real life experiences.
“Our schools are producing people who find it very hard to survive in an increasingly competitive labour market if they are lucky enough to get jobs,” said Musau Ndunda, the secretary-general of the Kenya National Association of Parents.
Even if enrolment for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam improves with increased government and donor funding, educationists said the real struggle remains in getting an accurate measure of how the enrolment and current student/teacher ratios are affecting pupils’ performance in the formative years.
There is no standardised test that measures such things as reading, writing and basic critical thinking ability in lower and middle classes in Kenya––the majority of whom attend public schools.
This means that the government cannot independently judge the quality of education that comes from its investment, which at Sh140 billion annually, takes the biggest chunk of the national budget of Sh760 billion.
“Celebrating new buildings and higher enrolments is a dangerous folly if it masks the reality that some children complete primary school without the ability to read and write,” said Dr Ruto, who co-ordinated the Uwezo Kenya survey.
“The central concern for policy makers––and the core incentives of the education system –– needs to be realigned towards promoting, measuring and rewarding real learning,” she said.
Measuring the quality of learning is a challenge the government has admitted facing but no action has yet been taken to arrest the situation.
“The challenge has been ensuring continuous monitoring of learner achievements so that it can be improved if need be,” said Education minister Sam Ongeri when he released the 2009 KCPE results in December.
While the impact of the free learning programme might not be reflected on the actual numeracy and literacy tests, concern is rising over the continued decline in the quality of education.
“There are serious discrepancies between expectations and reality in the education system,” said Lawrence Majali, the secretary general of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT). “Gaps in skills levels among pupils is a warning signal that all may not be well even despite the big investments we are making,” he said.
A combination of factors ranging from shortage of text books and other learning materials, overflowing classes, an acute teacher shortage, have conspired to ruin the quality of education in public schools.
Analysts reckon that the continued strain on schools by the subsequent over enrolment fuelled by FPE has spelt the death knell to some of the best public primary schools in Kenya.
“The true measure is not how many children are signed up for school or how many are showing up but how many are learning,” said Mr John Githongo, the chief executive officer of Inuka Kenya, a civil society organisation. “Emphasis needs to shift from education inputs alone to learning outcomes,” he says in a write up in the report.
Enrolment in primary schools clocked 8.9 million last year, up from 7.5 million on the back of the FPE meant to remove the fees burden from parents seven years ago.
But things are much better in private schools––the preserve of the middle and high income households –– that apart from having excellent educational and boarding facilities offer a band of incentives to the pupils that have ensured their dominance of the top positions in the national examination.
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Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
