Challenges, successes of education system since Uhuru

By WACHIRA KIGOTHO

KENYA: Kenya’s struggle for independence was marked by increased clamour for radical changes in education and in 1963, the country inherited a racially segregated education system that had marked Africans as providers of cheap labour to the colonial government and European settlers in the White Highlands and Asians in urban areas.

However, immediately after Independence, the new African government abolished the racial education system and replaced it with a unitary national education system. Essentially, the eight-year primary education cycle for Africans that was punctuated with stiff examinations along the line was discarded and replaced with a seven-year continuous primary education system similar to that in the former European and Asian schools.

Simultaneously, curriculum reforms were carried out, while still widening access to education at all levels. Amid efforts to establish a comprehensive education system in the country, the Government set up the Kenya Education Commission 1964-65, under the chairmanship of Prof Simeon Ominde to formulate a new education system for Kenya.

Specifically, the Ominde Commission was mandated to take into account the need for trained manpower for economic development, as well as establish an education system that would unite all Kenyans, irrespective of their race, religion or ethnicity.

Free and compulsory

Eventually, the Ominde Commission did not disappoint and came up with a robust utilitarian, social and cultural system of education embedded into six clear broad goals: National unity; national development; individual development and self-fulfilment; social equality; respect and development of cultural heritage and and international consciousness.

Among a raft of recommendations, Ominde Commission recommended a 7-4-2-3 system model of education: Seven years of Primary, four years of Secondary from the Form 1 to Form 4, two years of Advanced secondary education and a minimum of three years of university education. The commission also endorsed universal primary education in the near future that would be free and compulsory.

The crux of the matter is that during the struggle for independence, there were strong demands for free primary education. Subsequently, in its election manifesto of 1963, the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) identified education as one of its key pillars for economic development and committed itself to bring social change through education.

In its work, the Ominde commission was heavily influenced by the existing international opinion as well as Kenya’s political and economic forces.  One key policy document that had major imprint on Ominde’s recommendations was the 1965 Sessional Paper No. 10: African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya. The sessional paper was part of Kenya’s emerging political philosophy that regarded educational needs from an ideological standpoint and saw education as an economic factor rather than a social service.

Consequently, the number of primary schools rose from 6,058 in 1963 to 6,932 in 1973. By 19990, this number had increased to 14,864 primary schools. Currently there are 29,191 primary schools. By then, pupils proceeding to sit for the Kenya Primary Education (KPE) examination increased rapidly from 62,000 in 1963 to 133,000 in 1966. Some 50 years later in 2013, the number of pupils who sat for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) stood at 844,475.

In 1963, overall enrolment in primary school was 891,553, of whom 34 per cent were girls. By 1973, enrolment had risen to 18 million, of whom 44 per cent were girls. However, 50 years later, enrolment in primary schools has climbed to slightly over 10 million pupils, with the gender gap almost closed nationally. Whereas at independence there were only 151 secondary schools with an enrolment of 20,553 students, by 1973, the number of secondary schools had increased to 964 with enrolment of 175,325 students. Currently, there are 8,197 secondary schools with an enrolment of two million students.

From 1963, the spirit of cooperation led to a flurry of activities towards establishment of community secondary schools, popularly known as harambee schools.

Development of those self-help secondary schools was so rapid that by 1966 their number was 226 compared to the 199 fully maintained government schools. Currently, there are 8,197 secondary schools with an enrolment of two million students.

But the rapid expansion of education in Kenya has never been rosy. Just a few years after independence, there was an influx of primary and secondary school-leavers to towns in search of salaried employment. The reason was that due to intense reaction to the colonial education experience, the Ominde Commission had ignored vocational education in favour of elitist academic education. By 1966, there was an outcry that there was no correlation between education and the needs of the labour market.

To study the situation, in 1966 the government requested Dr Arthur Porter, the principal of the then University College Nairobi to convene a conference of education, economics and labour experts to advise on how to deal with an unemployment crisis of young people leaving school. The Kericho Conference on Education, Employment and Rural Development, recommended restructuring of the education system and relating it to rural and urban development and encouraging youths to take up vocational training in rural areas.

The conference called for establishment of village polytechnics as focal points for rural development and urged the Government to redirect a large segment of harambee schools towards training for rural development. However, most communities were opposed to their schools being transformed into vocational training centres and the idea finally collapsed.

School milk

By 1970, unemployment in Kenya as well as in most developing world had become a major problem. The crisis was seen to be closely associated with disparities in incomes and inequalities in quality education as the situation was linked to rural-urban migration with youths with limited education searching for employment opportunities in towns.

As a result, the International Labour Organization (ILO) launched a pilot project in Kenya that would form the basis for advising developing countries on how to deal with emerging crises in their countries. The ILO mission arrived in 1971 led by Prof Hans Singer of the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Sussex. At the end of its work in 1972, the mission published a report outlining the nature of unemployment problems in Kenya and made recommendations on how to alleviate the situation.

To stay relevant, Kanu in 1974 initiated a partial free primary education, while in 1979, retired President Daniel arap Moi launched a free education programme with a difference. While tuition was free, the direct imposition of building levies and other non-fee charges on parents was banned and schools were required to raise funds for construction and maintenance through harambee. At the same time the Government introduced a free school milk programme. Enrolment of Standard One pupils in 1979 rose sharply to 977,000 from 599,057 in 1978, representing an increase of 63 percent.  

However, just like its predecessors, the third free primary education initiative of 2003 was a political decision taken by the Narc government. In its manifesto, Narc had promised to provide free primary education, just like Kanu.