Investigate scale, cause of low school retention

Boredom does not strike us as a prime reason for the high dropout rates reported in the country’s education system. Thus, a call for school heads to "make education attractive" may serve more to improve learning for those who remain in school long enough to graduate with a full basic education.

Attrition (the loss of students from a class as it moves from one year to the next) remains a topic that is little discussed publicly. While the number that sits exams and fails to move on to the next level is often reported — and decried as too high — little attention goes to the much larger loss of classmates in the eight or four years before those exams.

Studies of the problem have identified various issues, ranging from poverty to drug abuse and unplanned pregnancies as contributing to this decline. The introduction of free primary education and subsidised secondary education helped address some of these issues. The school heads meeting in Mombasa will do well to review what else needs doing to lower student attrition. Attributing it to boredom may lead to the introduction of futile ‘solutions’.

Questions of providing learners with practical skills relevant to the job market are spot on. In deciding what measures to take in the coming years, headteachers need a better grasp of trends in society. The proposal to retire the quota system, for example, is only viable if considered in light of the growing interest in regional equity. We hope the meeting is alive to such issues and lets them inform any resolutions.