Last week, Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) announced it was awarding 96 scholarships to 2016 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam candidates.
The beneficiaries come from tea-growing zones across Kenya and scored more than 350 marks out of the possible 500 marks.
The programme is financed from internal resources and donor funds and targets bright but needy students from all the 67 tea factories which KTDA manages. It currently supports more than 200 students.
This is the kind of corporate responsibility that makes sense to any business.
It is a unique type of philanthropy that can be sustained even in times of depressed returns as it is intricately linked to the company’s primary business.
Over the last decade, we have seen the emergence of multiple initiatives designed to provide a lifeline to bright but needy young people who would otherwise have fallen by the wayside.
Thousands of students have benefited from these initiatives. No community has overcome poverty and prospered without investing in the education of its people. Economic prosperity depends, first and foremost, on the quality of human capital.
The country needs curriculum developers who can ensure the school syllabus meets the present and future needs of Government and the private sector; teachers who can identify talent at an early age and provide correct career guidance; doctors with commitment to research on, and treat complex ailments and a leadership that can channel the resources and energies of the State to realise the nation’s greatest potential.
The future of the tea industry, for instance, depends on our ability to innovate, to employ science and technology in production, processing and marketing and a business model that helps small holder tea farmers optimize the returns from their small holdings.
Tourism needs better marketing, agriculture cries for innovation, cost of manufacturing needs to be lowered and value addition is required across all sectors of the economy.
Despite the great need for skilled and entrepreneurial citizenry and its potential to turn around the nation’s fortunes, many kids still fall by the wayside after primary and secondary schooling either due to poverty or failure to secure place in secondary schools and tertiary institutions due to low exam grades.
Most of the available scholarships target top achievers, with the minimum considered at primary school being 350 marks. Yet only 22.6 per cent of the students who sat for the 2016 KCPE obtained more than 300 marks. Some 53.85 per cent of those who sat for the exams obtained between 201 and 300 marks.
While concerns have been raised about the ability of the underperformers, with reports that seven out of 100 children in Standard Eight in 2013 could not read or write in English and Kiswahili, an elaborate plan is needed to ensure that all children transition to secondary school, colleges or village polytechnics.
Thankfully, polytechnics are currently being revamped across the country with the sole purpose of absorbing those who don’t transition to secondary school. The private sector, particularly those that support educational initiatives would do well to focus on this category of learners and not just put all its efforts on the top academic achievers.
It is the polytechnics that will produce technicians and artisans for machine and factory operations. Besides, in this category lies immense technical talent and ability that are sometimes lacking in the A and B students. Teachers and parents have a responsibility to identify talent early so that young people can find the right bearing in life.
Not everyone is good with rote learning but certainly everyone has talent that can be developed and nurtured into a lifelong career. The society also has a duty not to look down on those who don’t perform well in national exams.
What we need are alternative centres of learning that do not necessarily follow the normal channels of learning.
