We have normalised humiliation of children with a begging bowl

A child holds a plate. [GettyImages]

This week Kenyan media published a harrowing story with the headline “Chief Clears Orphans To Beg For School Fees.” The chief's sign and blessing of such humiliation is not charity, it is abdication.

This single act, replicated in villages and towns, reveals a nation that has allowed its systems to fail, its promises to erode, and its most vulnerable to be paraded as proof of benevolence rather than rescued by law and policy. When President Kibaki reintroduced free primary education in January 2003, the capitation grant was Sh1,420 per pupil, a concrete promise.

Today that promise has been hollowed: capitation has barely kept pace with rising costs, hidden levies reappear, and families pay for uniforms, exam cards and administration fees that used to be covered. In late 2025 the government set primary capitation at about Sh2,238 per learner; secondary capitation has been stated at roughly Sh22,244 per learner, figures that look like support on paper but do not cover crumbling classrooms and rising operating costs. 

President William Ruto recently ordered that schools should admit Grade 10 learners whether or not they have new uniforms or have paid fees. The order matters; it asserts admission is non-negotiable. But orders without resources are hollow. Counties and schools must receive cash and accountability or the instruction remains a public posture, not a practical remedy.

The human consequences are immediate. For the Grade 10 roll-out a snapshot showed about 550,000 learners recorded in the placement portal out of an expected 1.13 million at one point, leaving hundreds of thousands unaccounted for, a tragic index of exclusion where fees, uniforms or exam costs are barriers. In contexts like these, a signed letter telling an orphan to beg becomes the visible face of policy failure.

Teacher shortages compound the problem. The Teachers Service Commission has set a multi-year target to recruit roughly 111,870 teachers to close the national shortfall and flagged an immediate need of about 58,590 teachers to staff Grade 10 across the country. Classrooms without teachers are not mere inconveniences; they destroy the promise of universal, quality education.

This is not only about numbers. The chief’s paper is a symbol: a state that abdicates its commitments lets dignity be traded for charity. To hand a child a permission slip to solicit for exam fees is to say, in bureaucratic language, we will not fund you, but we will bless your shame. That such notes are issued by chiefs, who are National Government Administrative Officers serving under the Office of the President, makes the act an institutional failure, not a rogue act of compassion.

The reversal of progress is political and moral. Funds that could buy textbooks vanish into inflated tenders and ghost projects. Governance becomes optics: inaugurations and glossy projects while children sit in dilapidated classrooms. Patronage replaces public policy; a token bursary, a photograph, and a headline substitute for structural funding and accountability. Restoration requires more than outrage.

It requires budgets that match promises, enforcement of the right to basic schooling in practice, the removal of hidden levies, rapid recruitment and deployment of teachers, and transparent prosecutions for those who divert public funds meant for education. It requires county and national leaders to back presidential orders with the transfers and oversight they need to work.

Civil society, the media and parents must treat every endorsed case of begging as a public test: who allowed it, who failed, and what will be done to return the child from the street to the classroom? The chiefs issuing begging certificates are agents of the state; their actions demand systemic remedies, not local sympathy.

A child asking for fees on a street corner is evidence not only of poverty but of failing institutions. When those institutions fail, citizens must insist the law and budgets reflect the moral priority of educating a nation. If the state cannot guarantee the basics, it should not permit officials to sign off on humiliations as solutions.

We must not accept that poverty becomes a spectacle. If the state cannot guarantee the basics, it should not permit officials to sign off on humiliations as if they were solutions. Let us call this by its true name: a betrayal.

The children cleared to beg deserve classrooms and dignity, not stamps of consent. Kenya must choose whether to be a nation that honours its promises to children or a nation that applauds its own ruin. We must mobilise now: parents, teachers, lawyers, faith leaders and citizens must insist on budgets that protect children, prosecute those who divert funds, and restore free, dignified education before another generation is lost. It has to be done now.