Why Kenya’s middle class loves public high schools

A public school in Kenya [PHOTO:Courtesy]

Kenya’s middle class feels the most aggrieved and is complaining the loudest over the few spaces reserved for students from private schools, popularly called academies. Why are they so bitter and are they justified?

The upper class is quiet because their children may not need these public schools — they have their own schools, which may offer a different curriculum. They probably long gave up on public education because of its poor reputation and because they have a choice. The hoi polloi have no choice.

Back to the middle class. Their anger has many sources.

One, they feel they pay taxes and maintain these prestigious public schools, and by extension, their children should be admitted to them. That is true to some extent because the salaries for teachers and other workers come from their taxes.

Affirmative action

The biggest source of their anger is that most grew up in the age of meritocracy, when the brightest got the best jobs and best schools. They find it hard to understand how things like affirmative action can replace merit.

The high fees they paid in academies was an investment: they would get dividends through paying less in public secondary schools.

There are also too few good secondary schools in Kenya, particularly private ones. This shortage raises the ‘price’ of good schools, not just monetarily, but also psychologically. It feels great to be among the chosen few to get into such institutions.

The other source of anger is that the middle class, like the upper class, loves to replicate itself. And going to the best schools is one way of replicating oneself. There is something sentimental about taking your child to your alma mater.

A factor rarely talked about is that middle class parents know from their own upbringing and schooling that public secondary school experience is one of the greatest assets in life.

They know, but rarely discuss it out loud, that the pampering in private schools is not good for one’s success after school. They learnt in their own lives that one could be a better swimmer by learning to swim in the deep end.

Public schools teach us to be frugal, take nothing for granted and be risk takers. That is closer to real life than the attention and care children get in private schools.

The values

Ever wondered why few great musicians come from Kenya’s leafy suburbs where children grow up owning pianos and other musical instruments? The same applies to scientists and even politicians. Most politicians grew up in less affluent places. Uhuru Kenyatta and a few others are an exception.

We could say that public schools better reflect the values of middle class parents than private schools.

Public secondary schools are opaque to the class system, with children treated the same. Compare that with private schools where kids are dropped off with different cars every day.

As Kevin Barret put it while responding to last week’s column on good secondary schools, State schools nowadays dominate performance in the UK, and the lustre of Eton and other private schools (called public in the UK) seems to be waning. Is the same likely to happen in Kenya?

Increasing dividends

Parents know that getting their children into good public secondary schools increases their chances of getting admission to choice courses in affordable public universities, which further increases the dividends of going to an academy.

Good public schools serve as a status symbols within the middle class. The best schools are national, keeping you away from the masses that populate county schools. Lots of great schools faded from the performance radar once they were localised through the quota system.

Will this love last forever?

The middle class, having tasted the fruits of good schooling, are willing to invest in their children’s education. No matter how much the country develops, education will remain the main conveyor of privilege, career, prestige and a good life.

If the Government stops the middle class from taking children to these good schools, they will probably follow the upper class and build their own private schools; that is already happening. Have you noted that most academies now have a secondary school, which is often called a senior school?

The new high schools have one advantage over public schools: resources.

Their only shortcoming might be getting top students. But that can be sorted out by offering financial aid and scholarships, or using the Starehe model, where the affluent subsidise the poor.

Deprived of the support of the middle class, the once prestigious schools could lose their lustre.

Should we really be annoying the middle class when we are trying to expand it?

The solution to this fierce competition for school slots is building more schools and improving their management. We should have built more than 80 new national schools from scratch, not promoted former provincial schools.

This approach reduced the space for the less intellectually endowed, who will always be with us.

Perhaps an easier option is for the middle class to take over badly run Government schools and run them professionally as their own through independent schools boards. This would be cheaper for them and would create lots of educational opportunities for their children.

The debate over schools has just begun.

By the way, parents from academies are hoarding lots of school slots with multiple admission letters, as they ran around looking for the next best school.

The writer is a lecturer at the University of Nairobi.

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