KCPE performance rides on quality of learning materials

By Wachira Kigotho

No matter how desperately the Government and parents want children in public primary schools to perform well in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), they cannot do their best in open-air schools or others in buildings that are literally falling apart.

Although the Ministry of Education says more than Sh8 billion have been spent towards building of new classrooms and rehabilitation of dilapidated ones in public schools since the free primary education was introduced, the situation on the ground is different as many schools are still in poor condition and unfit for learning process.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (Unesco) report on state of Kenya’s primary schools, 40 per cent are poorly ventilated, 49 per cent are without adequate furniture for pupils, 47 per cent are prone to noise and 10 per cent have roofs caving in.

The matter of absence of critical facilities in schools is so serious in that about 200,000 pupils attend primary schools that have no toilets.

Way above bench mark

Even in schools that have toilets, the number of pupils using each toilet is way above the bench mark set by the Ministry of Education of 30 boys and 25 girls per toilet.

Studies carried by Unesco’s Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality indicate the number of pupils using each toilet has doubled in recent years.

A view inside primary school compounds and more so in rural areas indicates the Government has no policy on school buildings. In some areas, children learn under trees because there are no classrooms.

In such circumstances, Unesco says: "Lessons conducted under trees are subject to weather conditions and concentration is difficult due to distractions." Elsewhere classrooms are built with plant material that are prone to termite attack or regularly roofs blown off by wind and cannot stand heavy rain.

No doubt progress has been made as enrolment in primary education has increased from 5.4 million pupils in 2002 to 9.4 million as of last year but hopes are dimming for universal primary education by 2015.

The issue is that although enrolment has gone up there are more than 1.2 million school going age children that are out of school.

Still, if the figures released by Education Minister Sam Ongeri are anything to go by, completion rates are slowing down, either affected by pupil’s dropout of school or repeating grades.

The crux of the matter is that whereas 1,252,000 pupils had joined Standard I in 2004, only 776,214 reached Standard 8 to register for the KCPE. During the eight year period 40 per cent of the pupils had lost the primary education completion race.

By any standards, Kenya’s primary education system has an element of high wastage, a scenario that seems not to have dawned on the Government and parents. The stakeholders seem to forget that getting children into school is a vital step, though not enough.

"To receive the full benefits of primary education, children must continue to attend classes and reach the final grade," says Sha Zukan, the United Nations under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs in-charge of monitoring and implementation of Millennium Development Goals.

Basically, Kenya’s education system, like any other in Sub-Saharan African countries, is fraught with poverty.

Social and cultural barriers

Evidence indicates a large segment of children in the poorest 20 per cent of households have the least chance of getting an education. The situation is worse when those children are girls.

"Compared to all groups, boys from the richest 20 per cent of households are the least likely to be out of school," says Zukan. Nevertheless, many children in Kenya are impacted negatively not necessarily by poverty but by social and cultural barriers to education.

In some communities, education is down graded and felt to be of limited value compared to other economic and cultural factors. For instance, in some parts of the country, teenage girls are perceived to be of value when they are married off early, rather than getting an education.

Subsequently, figures provided by Ongeri when he released 2011 KCPE results showed enrolment of boys in some counties exceeded that of girls in large margins. It is likely that the reason for the disparities is due to prevailing cultural factors in those areas.

Some of these counties were Mandera, Wajir, Tana River, Narok, Kwale, West Pokot and Homa Bay. Others were Isiolo, Marsabit, Samburu, Turkana, Garissa, Kajiado and Migori.

However, linked to their historical characteristics most of these counties on average have some of the worst school building facilities in the country. The bulk of those counties are in arid and semi arid areas where it is hard for pupils to attend school. Schools in those areas are normally far between and poorly constructed and maintained.

Until recently, neither the Government nor the parents were keen to link poor conditions of classrooms as a barrier to education.

Unavailable school inputs

But according to Dr Eric Hanushek, Senior Research Fellow at Stanford University, school infrastructure has impact on pupil enrolment, retention and academic outcomes as well as impact on teacher attendance.

Besides, recent studies carried in Kenya by Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ), the condition of school buildings was found to have impact on learning.

"There is a strong positive relationship between the condition of the school building and learning," says Dr Katharina Michaelowa in a comprehensive study on effectiveness of inputs in primary school education in Kenya.

In particular, lack of toilets was asociated with high teacher absenteeism that ranged between 11 and 27 per cent. Poor school infrastructure was cited to have a stronger impact on teacher absenteeism than even headmaster’s tolerance of absence.

The issue of availability of school inputs cannot be wished away. Amid efforts to find what was ailing primary education in Kenya, SACMEQ researchers noted in addition to poor school infrastructure, most pupils in public schools lacked basic learning materials.

"About 22 per cent of pupils lacked three basic learning items - exercise book, ruler and pen-that are necessary for effective participation in classroom activities," says Dr Njora Hungi, a researcher with Unesco’s International Institute for Educational Planning.

Although the Government says it has spent over Sh82 billion in free primary education to improve learning resources and infrastructure in public primary schools, it is worrying that many pupils have no sole use of core textbooks.

According to SAMEQ researchers, only 15 per cent of pupils have sole use of mathematics textbooks. "It is troubling that numbers of available textbooks had dropped since 2000, when the percentage of pupils with sole use of mathematics textbooks was 23 per cent," says SACMEQ.

Kenya seems to have the worst record of having few pupils having sole use of mathematics textbooks among the countries in the SACMEQ project network that comprise Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique and Namibia. Others are Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania (Mainland), Tanzania (Zanzibar), Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Textbook availability

So far, Nairobi has the largest concentration of pupils having use of mathematics textbooks at 47 per cent, while the situation deteriorates in most counties. Nevertheless, the textbook situation in rural areas is as bad as in urban schools. In Western Province, the use of those textbooks stands at seven per cent and nine per cent in Rift Valley.

Comparing availability of textbooks between public and private schools, the researchers noted large disparities.

On average, only 14 per cent of pupils in public schools made use of textbooks compared to 29 per cent of their counterparts in private schools. Of the basic learning materials, over 90 per cent of pupils in private primary schools had them.

As the debate rages over dominance of private schools in KCPE, the real struggle is not merely based on categorisation of schools but on availability and management of learning resources.

According to Kentaro Shimada, an educational researcher and a keen observer of Kenya’s education system at Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University in Japan, KCPE is a highly competitive examination and schools fight it out like the English Premier League teams for selection to quality secondary schools.

"Most primary schools have extra coaching sessions for pupils in the early morning, lunch time, and after-school, and even on weekends and holidays," says Shimada.

Whereas Shimada may have exaggerated a little over Kenya’s education system, he is right about one thing: KCPE is a highly selective and high stakes examination since only top candidates join the best secondary schools in the country.

To provide a fair playing ground for pupils in public schools, the Government and parents must know that quality of school and learning materials impact on pupil enrolment, attendance and learning achievement.