Millions schooling, but learning little

Nairobi, Kenya: Schools reopened for the second term this month. Candidates and teachers are all into setting sail in completing the curriculum and making time for revision for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination that is only six months away. Recently, during the launch of the Global Monitoring Report 'Education for All 2000-2015', the Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi said over two million children were not attending school.

Uwezo 2012 Annual Learning Assessment report paints a grim reality on the Kenyan state of education because there is evidence that minimal learning takes place in schools.

Consider these facts (a) 11 per cent of children in Standard Eight cannot do a Standard Two division, that is, 10 ÷ 5. About 70 per cent of them can neither read an English nor a Kiswahili story. (b) Nationally, only 30 per cent of Standard Three children can do Standard Two work, and (c) One out of five children in Standard Six to Eight cannot tell the meaning of the colours on the Kenyan flag, this implies that there is schooling with minimal learning.

Having a Standard Eight child, who after eight years of schooling and cannot divide 10 oranges among five children is shocking. It is unfortunate that a Standard Six pupil cannot tell the meaning of the colours of the national flag, yet the national flag is hoisted in schools every Monday and Friday morning. Having a child get to Standard Three who does not know how to read a paragraph is a real betrayal to self and the parent.

After assessing children at the household level for close to five years now, reality has it that children don't have basics that they ought to have mastered at their level. Some children cannot identify the names of various body parts even in their own local dialect, with a few of the rural folks able to identify their political leaders for instance the President.

The problem is that our society has put much focus on summative rather than formative evaluations and focused more on school inputs rather than outcomes. Desks and chairs, pencils, textbooks, students and teachers are essentials in a school, but they don't always imply learning is taking place.

We are keen to see many classrooms built and not keen to follow-up on what goes on in those classrooms. We are keen to hire more teachers and not keen to ensure that they are in class and indeed, teaching. Mahatma Gandhi said the real difficulty is that people have no idea what education truly is. We assess the value of education in the same manner we assess the value of land or of shares in the stock-exchange market.

The goal should not be to have many pupils in class, but rather to equip them with basic literacy and numeracy competences as well as prepare them to be productive citizens in the society. Many parents have sacrificed to take their children to school, only to achieve poor grades with which, illiteracy is borne.

Many secondary school leavers graduate with few skills, hence unprepared for today's economy even much less for the much hyped Vision 2030. Kenyans have to reflect and think strategically if all children were to attend school and indeed learn.

Top-down leadership and accountability must be employed in our education sector. Parents must actively follow-up on what their children are learning. We know that the Government has its priorities; restore national security, eradicate corruption, kill tribalism, rebuild our basic infrastructure, collect taxes and create an enabling environment for business opportunities hence create jobs.

But the foundation of this is better education system that is relevant to the needs of the Kenyan child and the world in the 21st century.