Selling free education: Poor students lose out in privatisation of schooling system in Kenya

Education standards in public schools have taken a nosedive over the years

NAIROBI: Elmi House of Grace Academy is not your typical private school. The main infrastructure consists of about half a dozen rusty iron-sheet structures that serve as classrooms. They form a border around a dusty open field that functions as a playground, assembly hall and parking lot.

The church-sponsored educational institution in the heart of Nairobi’s sprawling Kawangware estate serves the educational needs of 280 pupils mostly from low-income families.

The fees for each child is a subsidised Sh700 each month, and the headmaster, Mr Kenneth Mugita, tells us this amount is still out of reach for many of the parents and guardians who send their children to his school.

Situated on an unofficial buffer zone between Nairobi’s Kawangware slums and the plush Kileleshwa estate, most of the parents who send their parents to Elmi are security guards and cleaning women who serve in the houses in the leafy suburb.

“Many of the parents will pay you in installments each month. Often, you will get bad debts which you have no option but to write off because the parent is just unable to pay, especially after the deficit has accumulated for several months,” said Mr Mugita.

HIDDEN CHARGES

Aside from the Sh700, pupils are required to pay Sh600 to have their uniforms made by a resident tailor.

Those who can afford to pay Sh10 a day can eat lunch at school, but Mugita says not all pupils pay up, and often, the kitchen staff has to find a way of sharing the little that is available.

We asked why the parents do not take their children to the numerous public schools spread around the neighbourhood that are part of the Government-sponsored free primary education, and Mugita and his teachers scoffed.

“The free primary education is only free in theory, but in the practical sense, students in public schools are charged higher fees than they are here,” he said.

“Getting your student into the school in the first place is a major hustle, and then there are hidden costs like remedial tuition fees, field trips and activity fees, which most of the parents from poor communities find exorbitant.”

Ironically, Elmi Academy practically shares a fence with Braeburn Primary School, a name synonymous in the country with high-end early childhood education.

At Braeburn, the school fees for a single term for a pupil in Year 1 and 2 will set you back Sh400,900, according to the fee structure on the school’s website.

This excludes Sh24,400 for lunch and at least Sh46,800 for regular transport. Those who want their children to be picked up and dropped off from their doorsteps pay Sh85,400.

The two schools are metres apart, but a full year’s school fees for two students at Braeburn Primary School is enough to pay a year’s worth of school fees for all 280 pupils at Elmi, with some money left over.

Such is the gap between the rich and poor in the quest for basic education in Kenya.

NO CHEQUE, NO CHALK

Teachers in public schools are staying out of classrooms for a second week of the school year’s third term, owing to a national teachers’ strike over the payment of salary arrears.

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the teachers last month after years of a protracted court case. The Government was instructing to institute a 50-60 per cent pay hike.

However, Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich has said there is no money in this year’s Budget to effect the pay rise, and on Friday, President Uhuru Kenyatta termed the teachers’ demands “untenable”.

“That was a court error. I can’t pay, I won’t pay,” he said.

“You cannot kill tomorrow for what you want today ... the courts cannot rule that I pay what I do not have.”

The teachers have said they are willing to give up their jobs if the pay hike is not effected, and they have since been joined by the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu) in a show of solidarity.

A closer analysis of economic and education sector data from several sources indicates that pupils from poor families are the worst affected by the ongoing stalemate.

Last year, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology conducted a census of schools in the country to determine enrolment and access rates in basic education, focusing on other developments, like infrastructure.

It found that the number of primary schools in the country increased by 5.1 per cent from 28,026 in 2013 to 29,460 in 2014.

But for every new public primary school built between 2013 and 2014, seven private primary schools were set up.

Not only are private primary schools growing faster than public ones, private colleges also dominate the tertiary education field, with there being 101 private training institutions against 24 public ones last year.

EDUCATION AND EARNINGS

A recent study done by the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) sought to establish the link between education and the country’s socio-economic system.

Aside from highlighting sharp differences in the availability, access and quality of education along the different social levels, the report drew correlations between access to education, opportunities for employment and a widening of the gap between the rich and the poor.

Because of a lack of adequate early childhood education where they live, and the consequent poor development of foundational skills, children living in slums, rural, and arid and semi-arid areas are already disadvantaged right from the onset of their lives.

Lack of enough resources, infrastructure and student participation demotivates learning in most schools in these areas, meaning that such pupils fall behind their counterparts from well-heeled backgrounds — ensuring the gap between rich and poor keeps getting worse.

For poor families, the struggle to afford a decent education is often sidelined by more immediate priorities, like rent and food.

According to Unesco, every Sh1,000 invested in a child’s education will yield between Sh10,000 to Sh15,000 in economic growth over his or her lifetime.

Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) indicates that the Government’s free primary education policy has succeeded in increasing access to primary education, with enrolments increasing by close to 50 per cent over the last 10 years.

However, the figures paint a partial picture of success.

Education standards in public schools have taken a nosedive over the years, as poorly remunerated teachers struggle to contain classrooms bursting at their seams with new students each year.

Enrolment trends have shown that as student numbers increased in public schools, middle-class parents withdrew their children from these schools and transferred them to private schools.

As a result, school fees in private schools doubled, locking out students from poor households and confining them to poorly equipped public and private schools.

These are the effects of a poorly executed free primary education policy that has been showing signs of significant weaknesses for more than five years now.

A 2010 survey by Uwezo found that two out of three children in Standard 2 cannot read a paragraph for their level, a third cannot read a word, and one in four students in Standard 5 cannot read a Standard 2 paragraph.

Further, over 77 per cent of private school candidates qualify for secondary school by scoring over 250 points in KCPE exams.

In public schools, however, the pass rate is less glamorous, with more than half (55 per cent) failing to hit the halfway mark.

Private primary schools thus clinch the top positions, and subsequently, the majority of slots in top-performing national schools, taking the disparity forward into secondary school.

PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT

In 2010, the Government came up with a new selection formula based on a quota system that was expected to level the playing field in the access of top secondary slots by students from both public and private schools.

Under the new system, public school candidates were given preferential treatment, with 65 per cent of slots in national secondary schools being reserved for them, leaving 35 per cent for those from private primary schools.

The system later proved impractical in 2013 when hundreds of high-performing candidates from private schools lost places to public school candidates who had scored lower than they had, prompting legal action from private schools through the Kenya Private School Alliance.

The elevation of 30 provincial secondary schools into national schools failed to convince outraged parents, who said the institutions were national in name only, and lacked the clout and resources that define traditional national schools.

A study by MIT’s Poverty Action Lab, done in partnership with Harvard University and other scholars, found that the current quota system being used by the Ministry of Education did not address the root causes of the private-public performance gaps in the Kenyan education system.

The study further states that unintended consequences of the policy, such as increased social stratification in the secondary school system — where high-performing private primary school students attend private secondary schools — could negatively impact the public secondary school system in the long run.

This effectively means transitioning the inequality in primary education into the secondary education system. This will lead to further inequalities that are reflected in the access to tertiary education, and eventually, access to employment.

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