The government’s target of 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary school is noble. Education is the fulcrum on which virtually everything else hinges for success. If, therefore, the pivot is rickety, all else risks falling apart.

The quest for education in Kenya has driven a number of families into destitution. Many have sold land, farm produce and domestic animals in the hope something good would come out of it. Sadly, the anticipated happy ending hardly ever materialises. Unemployment among youth who have entered the job market after leaving school stands at 75 per cent with no respite in sight.

Following public outcry on high fees chargeable in secondary schools, the Government appointed a taskforce in 2014 under Mr Kilemi Mwiria. Following its recommendations, the government sought to regulate fees, which was done through Gazette notice number 1555 of March 11, 2015. The task force’s recommendations pegged secondary school fees at Sh53,554 annually, to cover the cost of teaching and learning material, boarding, meals, local travel, electricity, water, insurance, medical, repairs, maintenance, activity fee and personal emoluments. Day schools were to charge Sh9,397 while special schools, Sh37,210 annually.

The government undertook to top up the amount by Sh12,870 per student annually for those in boarding secondary schools. Later, this capitation was raised to Sh22,244. Disbursement was supposed to be in three installments in the ratio of 50, 30 and 20 per cent in first, second and third terms respectively.  But while the government has honoured its side of the bargain, it has not been without hitches, majorly, late disbursement.

In the wake of recent lamentations, the impracticability of achieving 100 per cent transition is apparent. The biggest impediment to achieving that goal is head teachers who would rather they operated in a vacuum to give them room to do as they wish. Hidden costs, a creation of principals and school boards, places education on a pedestal where only a handful can reach it, but even then, at full stretch.

In the process, the impression created is that the Government is completely unable to implement its own policies. Indeed, the silence from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and the Ministry of Education that greets current complaints underscores one thing; that in many instances, TSC and the Education CS George Magoha have no direct control over head teachers who routinely flout ministerial directives and laugh about it. On their part, county directors of education are either compromised or woefully incompetent.

All said, the inevitable conclusion is that the government’s interest in the 100 per cent transition statistics is for aesthetics. It promised to tackle illiteracy, so, what better proof than that all pupils who sat their KCPE are in secondary; even if all they did was get to the school, complete some form and be sent back home for lack of fees or unnecessary accessories?

I take an exceptional view to Prof Magoha’s approach to the whole issue, which I consider a badly crafted Public Relations stunt. No matter how well intentioned the CS is, prevailing circumstances negate his efforts. That the CS needed gumboots to access an area in Kisumu while seeking to ‘flush’ out those who had not reported to school encapsulates the whole sad story of misery. In those informal settlements, they lack basic things like roads, toilets, electricity and clean drinking water.

A single meal a day for people living in packed mud or carton and polythene paper houses is a luxury. A greater percentage of informal settlement dwellers and rural folk are jobless. Those lucky to find something to do are either security guards, domestic workers or hands-for-hire on building sites. The best paid among them hardly make Sh10,000 a month. Given such glum reality, Magoha is chasing a mirage in the utopian 100 per cent transition to Secondary School when some schools charge Sh75,000 in first term.

Free education

Some desperate kids have offered to sell their kidneys to finance their education. Others in their innocence have opted to sell water to raise fees. Telling them there are no returns in selling water is like adding salt to injury so, they just have to ride that false hope. In any case, their lives are nothing more than hope for a better tomorrow.

Magoha should spend his efforts cajoling the government to try and find ways of raising funds for true free education. Let Treasury slash budgets from sleepy, non-productive ministries and channel it to financing free education. Rein in errant head teachers and cut out unnecessary requirements.

If school heads feel the economic pinch, what do they imagine parents with several kids in primary, secondary school and university go through in the midst of our retrogressive economy? A level playing ground in matters of education is the only thing that can break the vicious circle of poverty localised in millions of struggling families across the country.

Mr Chagema is a copy editor at The Standard.achagema@standardmedia.co.ke