Parents not blameless over ills in schools

By Wachira Kigotho

Statistics released during the secondary school principals’ conference in Mombasa indicate policy failure at the Ministry of Education and lack of leadership in schools.

The figures showed in the last five years, only 24 per cent of 1.3 million KCSE candidates scored average grade of C+, the minimum entry point to university. During the same period, about 19,000 candidates scored E grade, which is just one point.

But whereas those statistics put the Ministry of Education and teachers on the spot, parents are not blameless. They, through the Parents and Teachers Associations, have not offered effective checks and balances in management of schools.

According to a World Bank report on instruction time use in schools, little time is being dedicated to learning curriculum-related content. The situation is worse in district secondary schools, where teacher and student absenteeism has been on the rise.

Criminal Gangs

But probably more serious, parents have not been preventing criminal gangs from recruiting students. According to a United Nations Centre for Human Settlements report, many boys abandon schools to join criminal gangs.

"Whereas education has been a major form of social capital investment, its value has been minimised in the eyes of youths," says the report. It forecasts low academic achievement of boys in rural areas and urban slums unless measures are taken to contain criminal gangs, especially in Central Province, Nairobi and parts of the Rift Valley.

However, the situation has a different twist in many schools. Some parents with children in boarding schools have the habit of visiting their children every month and provide them food that would put menu in five-star hotels to shame.

Although there is nothing wrong in students eating well, the issue is that many parents do not buy their children the necessary textbooks. "Instead of providing textbooks and other core learning materials, parents bring their children expensive food supplies," a teacher in one of the secondary schools in Nairobi said in an interview this week.

Parents in Nairobi have been blamed for turning school visiting days into carnivals. Besides large quantities of food, parent’s troop to the schools accompanied by their other children, relatives and friends and the school visiting day becomes a family day out.

Disco music is often allowed and there is no time for parents to discuss educational matters. Although the Government is providing partial school fees for secondary schools, core textbooks are heavily shared.

Textbooks Hardly Available

According to the World Bank report, Textbooks and Library Provision in Secondary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, only 20 to 40 per cent of secondary school students in urban centres have access to all the core textbooks.

"Access to non-core textbooks is more serious as one book is often shared among eight students," says Jacob Bregman, an education specialist at the World Bank. But the situation is worse in rural schools where less than five per cent of students have subject core textbooks. Some students go through secondary education without textbooks.

For most schools, especially the low-cost private secondary schools, textbooks are hardly available. The teacher usually copies out the material on the blackboard.

As parents worry about the performance of their children, it is necessary to know that no student can perform well without having the core textbooks, highly motivated teachers, good school leadership and environment conducive to learning.