Refugees too need unrestricted access to quality education

The ultimate aim of an education system is to equip learners with numeracy, literacy and life skills to realise their potential and for their respective countries to generate jobs, innovation and economic growth.

Kenya, East Africa’s economic power house, has done relatively well on education but it is yet to focus on an effective system that offers life skills to learners, affording them basic skills to contribute to the country’s development agenda.

Northern Kenya is one of the most marginalised regions. Children in this area have little or no access to basic education supplies including books, teachers and general infrastructure.

In this region, one-in-three children are out of school and progress towards secondary and university education has nearly stalled.

At the same time, learning levels among children who are in school are abysmal.

Most children in these regions will reach the adolescence stage lacking even the most basic literacy skills. This will hinder them from achieving their lifelong goals as well as contributing to the national development agenda. In turn, these regions will continue ragging behind in development and will remain marginalised because of these learning deficits.

The government, through policies and other gate keeping measures, has done well in addressing these deficits. However, there is need to do more and this can be done by the private sector and the development partners among them education-supporting NGOs, charities and donors.

This move will help address the learning deficit which has, and continues to, deprive a whole generation of opportunities to develop their potential and eradicate poverty.

Poor education policies and inequality in resources distribution to schools will undermine the prospect for dynamic growth with shared prosperity. A very good example is the distribution of resources to refugee learners.

Although they are not ‘natively’ Kenyan and are under the care of international refugee agencies such as UNHCR, these kids require a gift of education in life, a gift that will keep on giving in their lives.

Kenya is home to close to one (1) million refugees spread across the Kakuma Refugee Camp, Dadaab Refugee Complex and Kalobeyei Settlement Scheme. These camps house more that 200,000 school going children who have very little access to basic learning materials.

Take the case of Kakuma Refugee Camp with 64,794 school-going children spread across 22 schools. Most of these kids have no access to text books and rely on what the schools can provide. Take a case of Peace primary school within the camp ad with a population of 6,913 and where 7 kids share one desk and another 23 share one text book.

Mathematically speaking, a kid can only access a text book after at least 22 others have read it, meaning once a month. This gives the child an undue advantage compared to their peers in other parts of the country who have access to unlimited number of books, libraries and technology. Not forgetting that these refugees play an integral part in the country’s economy.

The Dadaab Refugee Complex, located in Kenya’s Garissa County, has a school-going kids population of 70,405.

However, the number of school-going age in this camp stands at 120,959. Most of the un-enrolled kids have not been motivated enough to go to school due to lack of basic supplies.

This further explains why some will opt to join radicalization classes where they do not require books, writing materials and libraries but just an instructor.

To effectively fight radicalisation in Kenya reduce crime such as banditry and cattle rustling, there is need to ensure that kids from marginalised areas have access to education instructional materials.

Education, without a doubt, is one of the pillars of Vision 2030 and will also lead Kenya to attainment of the Strategic Development Goals (SDG).

- The writer is the Donate A Book Kenya Managing Director. [email protected]