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If you want to know what lies ahead for any society, look at the quality of its education. For young people, education is a critical factor. It prepares individuals, as well as societies, to manage their environment for survival as individuals and communities.
This was long ago recognized in traditional Africa, where informal education of the youth was compulsory, free and universal. Everyone was taught the customs, practices and values of their people. They were prepared for responsible adulthood and equipped with valuable skills, trades and the cultural philosophy of their society.
The changing times demand that we give quality education and training to the youth so as to add value to their and our collective life as a society. Government and other player must consciously endeavor to address this basic right and strive to achieve education for all, which is one of the Millennium Development Goals that Kenya is beholden to.
The idea of universal primary education was first mooted in Kenya in 1973. When marking the 10th anniversary of independence, founding President Jomo Kenyatta declared that primary education would be free from January of the following year. Increasing economic hardship, however, saw the introduction of school fees.
Thirty odd years later, fresh efforts are made to provide free primary education. Some meaningful steps have been made in this direction, but a lot remains to be done.
In many parts of the country, the pupil-teacher ratio is still far from satisfactory as it stands at about 1:60, when it should be 1:40. In some schools, there are more than 100 pupils to each teacher.
This erodes the quality of teaching. In most parts of the country, especially in the rural areas, many children learn under trees or in substandard classrooms.
The children are exposed to the natural elements and other physical circumstances that make learning difficult. While some children are hungry at school, have no access to proper medical care, no uniforms, no sanitary facilities and suffer from the shortage of teachers, others experience the opposite. Standards should be improved so that all children- irrespective of background and circumstance – get quality education.
In free primary education, a lot has been done in the provision of textbooks. While there are still many problems to grapple with at the primary school level, more should be done in regard to secondary schools and other post-primary institutions. Poverty and the adverse economic conditions are such that many parents cannot afford to take and retain children in secondary schools even though the institutions spend less than a dollar on each child a day.
By the United Nations standards, any one who lives on less than a dollar a day lives below the poverty line. It is difficult to imagine how this paltry figure is spread out in schools to cover three meals a day, books, laboratory equipment, new technology, sports facilities and a wide range of co-curricular needs.
It becomes worse when school fees are raised. Different ways of funding secondary education should be sought. How do we increase chances of more students joining high school and at the same time ensure quality education? How do we make the universal average standards in high school qualitative? How do we tap skills, technology and knowledge acquired in high school?
These are the questions we must think about and solve to successfully address the question of life beyond universal primary education.
-- by Johnstone Wanjala - PWI Reporter Kenya - kenya@peoplewebinternational.com
This was long ago recognized in traditional Africa, where informal education of the youth was compulsory, free and universal. Everyone was taught the customs, practices and values of their people. They were prepared for responsible adulthood and equipped with valuable skills, trades and the cultural philosophy of their society.
The changing times demand that we give quality education and training to the youth so as to add value to their and our collective life as a society. Government and other player must consciously endeavor to address this basic right and strive to achieve education for all, which is one of the Millennium Development Goals that Kenya is beholden to.
The idea of universal primary education was first mooted in Kenya in 1973. When marking the 10th anniversary of independence, founding President Jomo Kenyatta declared that primary education would be free from January of the following year. Increasing economic hardship, however, saw the introduction of school fees.
Thirty odd years later, fresh efforts are made to provide free primary education. Some meaningful steps have been made in this direction, but a lot remains to be done.
In many parts of the country, the pupil-teacher ratio is still far from satisfactory as it stands at about 1:60, when it should be 1:40. In some schools, there are more than 100 pupils to each teacher.
This erodes the quality of teaching. In most parts of the country, especially in the rural areas, many children learn under trees or in substandard classrooms.
The children are exposed to the natural elements and other physical circumstances that make learning difficult. While some children are hungry at school, have no access to proper medical care, no uniforms, no sanitary facilities and suffer from the shortage of teachers, others experience the opposite. Standards should be improved so that all children- irrespective of background and circumstance – get quality education.
In free primary education, a lot has been done in the provision of textbooks. While there are still many problems to grapple with at the primary school level, more should be done in regard to secondary schools and other post-primary institutions. Poverty and the adverse economic conditions are such that many parents cannot afford to take and retain children in secondary schools even though the institutions spend less than a dollar on each child a day.
By the United Nations standards, any one who lives on less than a dollar a day lives below the poverty line. It is difficult to imagine how this paltry figure is spread out in schools to cover three meals a day, books, laboratory equipment, new technology, sports facilities and a wide range of co-curricular needs.
It becomes worse when school fees are raised. Different ways of funding secondary education should be sought. How do we increase chances of more students joining high school and at the same time ensure quality education? How do we make the universal average standards in high school qualitative? How do we tap skills, technology and knowledge acquired in high school?
These are the questions we must think about and solve to successfully address the question of life beyond universal primary education.
-- by Johnstone Wanjala - PWI Reporter Kenya - kenya@peoplewebinternational.com
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