Report shows many learners at Senior School can't read or do basic maths

Usawa Agenda Executive Director Emmanuel Manyasa during the launch of the 2026 Junior School Education and Senior School Survey Reports at KICD in Nairobi on August 19, 2026. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

After spending seven years in school, nearly three in every 10 learners are joining Junior School without being able to read and understand a simple Grade 3 story or solve a basic Grade 3 mathematics problem.

New evidence shows that thousands of learners are moving through the education system without mastering basic reading and numeracy skills that they should have acquired in their first three years of primary school.

The learning gaps persist even after learners spend three more years in Junior School.

By the time they reach Grade 9, nearly two in every 10 learners still cannot read and understand an English story they should have mastered in their first three years of primary school.

The problem is even worse in Mathematics, where three in every 10 have not mastered basic mathematics skills they were taught in Grade 3.

The findings are in two reports by the Usawa Agenda on Junior and Senior School education as the country implements the Competency-Based Education system.

Overall, 29 per cent of Grade 9 learners lacked both foundational literacy and numeracy competencies.

The Junior School report, found that 27.3 per cent of Grade seven learners could not read with comprehension a Grade three English story.

At the same time, 32.6 per cent could not solve a Grade three numeracy problem. The report found that more than four in 10 Grade seven learners lacked both competencies.

By Grade nine, 18 per cent of learners still could not read and comprehend the Grade 3 level story, while 22 per cent could not solve the basic numeracy problem.

Usawa Agenda said failure to acquire foundational literacy and numeracy skills in the early grades has lasting effects as learners progress through the education system.

The findings come as another cohort of learners prepares to move from Junior School to Senior School, raising concerns about whether learners are progressing through the grades without acquiring the competencies required to cope with the curriculum.

Education stakeholders have warned that the reforms could reproduce the inequalities they were intended to eliminate if differences in resources between schools are not addressed.

Emmanuel Manyasa, Executive Director of Usawa Agenda, said the clustering of Senior Schools risked taking the country back to the problem of competition for a limited number of well-resourced schools.

“The Ministry of Education needed to confront the disparities rather than allow learners and parents to compete for schools perceived to offer better opportunities,” Manyasa said during the launch of the report.

He said the government should return to the core question of whether the education system was providing equal opportunities to learners regardless of the school they attended.

The reports found that the problem extends beyond learning outcomes, with disparities reported in access, affordability, teachers, infrastructure, school leadership, health, safety, ICT and household circumstances.

The Junior School report found that 96 in every 100 children aged between 12 and 17 were enrolled in school, with girls marginally more likely to be enrolled than boys.

The national figure, however, masks significant regional disparities.

In Garissa, 22.8 per cent of children in the age group were out of school, compared with a national average of four per cent.

Turkana, Mandera, Marsabit and Samburu also recorded out of school rates above 14 per cent.

Children with disabilities faced an even greater challenge, with about 17 per cent out of school compared with four per cent nationally.

The report found that the rate was 35.6 per cent among children with autism, 32.2 per cent among those with mental disabilities and 31.6 per cent among children with speech disabilities.

Attendance was also identified as a concern, with 5.2 per cent of Junior School learners absent on the day of the survey.

The rate rose to 13.4 per cent in refugee communities, more than twice the national rate.

Western recorded the highest regional absenteeism rate at 6.2 per cent, while private Junior Schools recorded the lowest rate at 3.3 per cent.

Families face costs as children enter Junior School

The transition to Junior School is also placing a financial burden on households.

The report estimated that joining a rural public Junior School costs an average of Sh8,186, while the cost in urban public schools rises to Sh11,362.

In private schools, the cost was almost twice as high, at Sh22,223 in rural areas and Sh21,954 in urban areas.

The report identified school fees as the biggest component, followed by uniforms, meals and other levies.

Hesborn Otieno of KNUT said the financial burden facing families needed to be considered when discussing equitable access to education.

He said parents were already struggling with rent, school fees and other household expenses, making additional education costs particularly difficult for low-income families.

Otieno also raised concerns about the reliance on Board of Management teachers, saying their distribution was highly uneven across the country.

He cited a school in Taita Taveta near the Tanzania border where he said about 95 per cent of the teachers were employed by the Board of Management.

He said such disparities raised questions about equitable distribution of teaching resources and called for greater attention to schools that depend heavily on parents to fill staffing gaps.

The findings show that families continue to incur significant costs when children move to the next stage of basic education.

The reports also found that many Junior Schools lack the infrastructure and learning materials required to support the curriculum.

Only 27.5 per cent of Junior Schools had functional science laboratories, while 27 per cent had libraries.

Only 34 per cent had received or purchased adequate learning materials.

The report found significant differences between public and private schools.

Nearly 69 per cent of private Junior Schools had functional science laboratories compared with 21 per cent of public schools.

About eight in 10 private schools had computers for learners compared with 39 per cent of public schools.

Rural schools were also disadvantaged, with only 16.5 per cent having functional science laboratories compared with 45.5 per cent of urban schools.

Libraries were available in 43 per cent of private Junior Schools compared with 24.5 per cent of public schools.

In rural areas, only 22.2 per cent of schools had libraries.

The regional differences were also significant, with Nairobi recording functional science laboratories in 98.7 per cent of Junior Schools compared with 13.8 per cent in Western.

The report also found that implementation of CBE has created demand for teachers with specialised skills, but their distribution remains uneven.

Urban Junior Schools had an average of seven teachers compared with four in rural schools.

Nairobi had the highest average at eight teachers, while North Eastern had three.

Nationally, Junior Schools had an average of five teachers.

The composition of the teaching workforce was also uneven, with six in 10 Junior School teachers trained in Social Sciences, three in 10 in STEM and one in 10 in Arts and Sports.

The challenges identified in Junior School continue into Senior School, according to the third Senior School Survey by Usawa Agenda.

It found that the recategorisation of secondary schools from national, extra county, county and sub-county schools into Clusters One to Four had not fundamentally changed the historical pattern of resource allocation.

Cluster Four schools, which make up the largest share of schools and educate the majority of learners, continued to lag behind Cluster One schools in resources and performance.

Of the 1,194 schools surveyed, 37.4 per cent were Cluster Four, 17.4 per cent Cluster Three, 12.2 per cent Cluster Two, 8.2 per cent Cluster One, 22 per cent private schools and 2.8 per cent special schools.

Usawa Agenda found that Cluster One schools were better resourced, while Cluster Four and special schools remained heavily understaffed and lacked science laboratories, computer laboratories, libraries and sports facilities.

Manyasa said the disparities between clusters needed to be addressed if the government was to achieve equity and equal opportunities.

He questioned whether the clustering system could unintentionally reproduce the competition for well-resourced schools that previous education reforms had sought to address.

Class sizes are heavily skewed

A typical Cluster One school had about eight streams per class compared with fewer than two in Cluster Four and 1.4 in private schools.

The report found that a typical Cluster One class had more than seven times as many learners as a typical Cluster Four class.

Cluster One schools had between 55 and 60 learners per stream compared with 40 to 43 in Cluster Four and about 30 in private schools.

Uniforms were also identified as a financial burden, with a complete set costing more than Sh5,000 in four out of 10 Senior Schools.

The Senior School report also examined the relationship between school category and KCSE performance.

A typical Cluster Four school presented 73 candidates for the 2024 KCSE compared with 359 candidates from a typical Cluster One school.

Average KCPE entry marks ranged from 214 in special schools to 362 in Cluster One schools.

Cluster Four schools averaged 242 marks while private schools averaged 270.

The report found that a learner in a Cluster One school was more than eight times as likely to attain C plus and above and go on to join university.

In a Cluster Two school, learners were more than twice as likely to attain C plus and above as a learner in Cluster Four.

A learner in a private Senior School was 57 per cent more likely to score C plus and above than one in Cluster Four.

Boarding school learners were more than two and a half times as likely to attain C plus and above as day school learners.