Analyzing KCPE results is always both
insightful and disconcerting. Out of the 937,453 candidates who sat KCPE in
2015, 139,393 (15 percent) were enrolled in private schools. The average score
in public schools was 181 out of 500 marks, significantly lower than the 230
mean score attained candidates enrolled in private schools.
Here is what is most disconcerting.
Over 200,000 students or 21 percent, a number higher than the total enrollment
in private schools, scored well below 200 marks. It is unconscionable that more
than 20 percent of young men and women, most of them from public schools, will
not have a high school education.
Consider this. In the financial year
2015/2016, the government spent Ksh.10 billion in grant capitation to support
9.1 million children in primary school. In my view this scale of public
investment is worryingly modest. A service delivery survey conducted by the
World Bank revealed that there is no significant difference in learning
infrastructure (classrooms, blackboard, light, toilets) between public and
private schools.
However, private schools had a significantly
higher capacity to support delivery of quality learning. For example 49 percent
of teachers in private schools had basic reading and math skills compared to
only 35 percent of teachers in public schools. Moreover, a teacher in a private
school spent about three hours thirty minutes teaching in day compared to two
hours twenty minutes by a teacher in a public school.
If you take into account level funding,
the competence and commitment of teachers, quality is the least likely
attribute of Kenya’s public primary schools. Parents in the lower middle class,
middle class and the wealthy classes get this and are making enormous
sacrifices to educate their children in private schools. For example, to
educate the 139,393 KCPE candidates in about 6000 private schools private
school in 2015, parents spent about Ksh. 9 billion, assuming conservative average
annual tuition cost of Ksh.60, 000. Our government spent Ksh. 10 billion to
educate 9.1 million children in public schools.
We cannot fault well to do parents for
sending their children to private schools. But we must be mindful that achievement
gap created by these choices is bad for the future for this country. The 15
percent of the children from private schools will most likely gobble 70 percent
of places in the top publicly funded national and county secondary schools.
With this firm toehold on the first rung of the ladder of opportunity, these
kids from more privileged backgrounds will outcompete children from poorer
backgrounds, exacerbating socio-economic inequality.
The provision of free and quality
education should help bridge historical socio-economic inequality in our
society; enabling a child born with less material privilege to hold and achieve
the same life goals as a rich kid. In the 21st century, access to
free and quality education must be the Open
Sesame that guarantees poor rural children access to opportunity in a
competitive knowledge economy.
Access to free and quality education could
emancipate tens of millions of boys and girls from rural poverty, and the limited
opportunities that define the existence of their parents. Think about tens of
millions young men and women graduating from our colleges, polytechnics and universities
to take up careers their forebears could not even begin to imagine; as lawyers,
doctors, engineers, plumbers, masons, mechanics, artists, teachers, faith
leaders, entrepreneurs and merchants, all spread across this great land.
Access to quality education must be a
birthright, not a privilege preserved for the rich. As we think about reforms
in the education sector, we must take a hard look at the scale and quality of
public spending in public education. We also need to improve the quality of
teachers in our public schools.
Hence, we need a fair and stringent
mechanism for holding teachers accountable to the learning outcomes of our
children. In my view a performance contract provides a chance for the teachers
to demand the resources they need to do their job and close the achievement gap
between public and private schools. These include textbooks, small class sizes,
lower teaching load, and children who are well fed and ready to learn.
Access to quality education for all
citizens is good for us all. Imagine tens of millions of new middle-income
consumers in vibrant modern, well-planned towns, new tax payers and a
government more emboldened and committed to advancing equal opportunity for all
citizens.
Good stuff
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