Declining education standards in Taita Taveta County cause concern

Taita Taveta, Kenya: High Court judge Justice Msagha Mbogholi has blamed teachers and school managers for poor academic performance in his native Taita Taveta County and warned that poor examination results have compromised the region’s future development.

The judge also challenged parents to take their children’s education seriously.

“All stakeholders must work together to improve the region’s poor education standards. This is especially needed between parents and school administrators,” he said.

Speaking at a meeting in Voi town, the judge said the dwindling standards of education is worrying and called for policies to reverse the downward trend.

He said though the region is endowed with numerous resources like vast mineral deposits, wildlife and water bodies they have very low economic value to the local community.

Mbogholi’s sentiments come at a time when the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) has also voiced their concern over poor education standards in the county.

Dismal performance

The union’s Kwale branch executive secretary Shedrack Mutungi said they have identified numerous factors that are contributing to the decline in education standards especially in secondary schools.

These factors include high poverty levels, lack of political support and good will, poor school infrastructure, drug and substance abuse, low motivation among teaching staff, persistent human wildlife conflict, lack of guidance and counseling, derogatory cultural practices like early marriages and pregnancies, child labour, water shortages, and lack of school feeding programmes.

“Performance in national examinations has not been good. In the past couple of years, our national ranking has placed us among the worst performing counties. This cannot be allowed to go on,” he said.

This concern by various officials cannot be ignored if data from the Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) is anything to go by.

A look at this information reveals that Taita Taveta County was position 36 out of 47 counties in the 2012 KCSE examination and none of its top five schools appeared in the top 100 schools nationally.

The county only had two A’s in 2012 and 78 per cent of its candidates scored below C-. Further still, in the last five years, the county has only managed a mean score of D plus which is way below the minimum university entry requirement.

The county is not doing any better in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) where it was ranked position 38 out of 47 counties last year and position 45 in 2012.

Blame games

Mutungi cautioned education stakeholders against blaming each other over the poor education standards and instead finds ways of improving it.

The county government has also taken a keen interest in this matter. One of the executive’s first act upon assumption of office was to constitute a task force to look into this issue.

The task force appointed by Governor John Mruttu made a number of recommendations that include infrastructure improvement, increase in boarding facilities and introduction of school feeding programmes as some of the ways to improve the county’s poor education standards.