Reality check as Knec releases KCSE results

By MOSES MICHIRA

Kenya: Today is a special day for thousands of students who sat the KCSE exam last year.

It is a moment for making tough choices for more than half of the estimated 450,000 candidates when their results are released this morning.

Some might never proceed to universities or colleges, in a situation complicated by the limited opportunities in tertiary institutions and an education system that has been described as dysfunctional.

They will be part of the piling youthful population that lacks any skills but now presents what could be the biggest headache yet to the country’s development. On paper, they are the human capital required to power Kenya through the projected industrialisation and exploitation of the vast natural resources.

Legislators and economists have called the situation in Kenya’s system a crisis, which needs to be addressed urgently. “We have a tragedy in our hands,” said Rev Mutuva Musyimi, of the low transition rates from secondary schools.

It is a sobering prospect for the 200,000 Form Four graduates, who must somehow find something to do, an activity to generate a living but one which neither them nor the State knows.

Right skills

Musyimi, who chairs the budget committee in the National Assembly, added that the focus for the country should shift towards investment in more technical training institutions, which would provide the right skills for industrialisation. “The only way we will get it right is through investment in the education of our young people.”

There is high-dependency rates and crime as a direct consequence of the weaknesses in the education system, he said. Youth unemployment is estimated at 60 per cent, and only set to be exacerbated with the new entrants.

Among the skills that are in short supply include plumbers and technicians, who are required in the booming construction segment. Already, only two in every three of the students who are expecting their results today made it through the 12 years of school; 280,000 others dropped along the way, according to statistics from the Education ministry. Over 727,000 pupils enrolled in Class One in 2002, the last cohort before the introduction of universal free primary education in the following year.

While there are no formal statistics on the number of people that have dropped out after attaining secondary education, enrollment in the country’s tertiary institutions, including polytechnics, middle levels colleges and universities is just about 250,000. The State sponsored 53,000 students to public universities last year while another 50,000 were admitted as self-sponsored in the 47 institutions. Limited allocation towards university education has meant that only a small proportion of the students who achieve the minimum university entry requirement grade of C+ are admitted. In the previous year, for instance, only 33 per cent of the students who passed were actually admitted under the State-sponsored programme.

Attract investors

But even for the lucky few who pass and are enrolled in tertiary institutions, there are no guarantees on gaining meaningful employment on completion. One reason advanced for the lack of quality jobs is the inability of the country to attract investors, partly due to a hostile business environment, notes the World Bank. While President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government has started to tackle the bottlenecks in doing business, Kenya has steadily slid in the pecking order of ease of doing business indicators’ survey and is now placed 129 globally out of 189, down from position 72 in 2008. It is expected that the recent discovery of oil in Northern Kenya would spur a new wave of investments and possibly create job opportunities.

MP Sabina Chege, who chairs the education committee in the National Assembly, thinks that while the country has in the past failed its youth, solutions to the education problem lie in establishing polytechnics across the country to absorb the millions of youth who are presently ignored.