Kenyan Education System

It is really funny that what reminded me that I hadn’t updated my blog in a while was the threat of another teachers’ strike. Luckily for the students, along with Jimmy and I and our respective attempts to work with schools here, the strike was canceled when the government realized that they better pay the teachers what they had promised last year.

I am currently in the next town to the west hanging out at a restaurant with my computer. My house was connected to the electric grid a few weeks ago, then one week later the transformer in my neighborhood blew. Now, there is no electricity anywhere near my house and I don’t think they will fix it anytime soon. I went to the town below the hill where I live, but they told me the building where all the stores rent space didn’t pay the power bill last month so there is no power there either. Anyway, so I’m now camped out at this nice restaurant drinking cold soda and enjoying an excuse to escape into attempted anonymity. Anyway, the television is on here and there is a special program about education in Kenya on. How fortunate for me. So, while I work I am listening to politicians talk about education in Kenya…Definitely worth a laugh.

The Obama administration, and several other foreign dignitaries, made speeches congratulating the Kenyan president on having “free,” “compulsory,” primary education. The Kenyan government explained how much this means to the students here who have the opportunity to attend school. Now in program evaluation we know there is a difference between what is inside an accepted proposal and what actually is implemented. When the politicians describe “free” primary education, they mean that students can go to public primary schools here without paying school fees. This contradicts the crying child whose public school fees I just paid last week so that he wouldn’t get caned (beat with a tree branch). One student here added up all of his “school fees” that he has had to pay for public school so far this term and jokingly informed me that if he paid an extra 20 shillings (the cost of a small bottle of soda) he could have paid for private school. When the politicians describe “compulsory” education, surely this doesn’t mean the same thing as when Jimmy and I show up to a school where students have been “sent.” Students (often more than 75% of a school) are frequently sent home for things like lack of school fees, tardiness, answering questions incorrectly, or general cheekiness (a.k.a. behavior problems or boredom). My question to the politicians, how do you plan to evaluate and enforce free, compulsory primary education? So far, I would say that it is not working as well as intended. 

I won’t even talk about secondary education. Though, if anyone would like to pay school fees for an orphaned child here, I know a couple who still need help. You can pay through a program at the health clinic that is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Visiting Nurse and Hospice Care (http://www.vnhcsb.org/employees/). I think the school fees run from about $35-50 per year so it really isn’t bad from a US perspective. Here, it is ridiculously hard for families to afford though. It’s a short term fix that can help a student out now, but in the long run the government really needs to work on distributing funds and evaluating schools better on their progress toward affordable education.

Since I cannot fix everything (even though I thought I could in high school), it is back to evaluating programs where my reports will be read and changes will actually be made, albeit on a much smaller scale.