High Cost Education widens gap between rich and poor
- Education News
Each and every start of year is always a nightmare for parents with school-going children. You may ask why,here is the reason; The high cost of education which changes every now and then as months and years go by.
Only so few parents across the country can comfortably afford the high school fees charged by a few respectable schools – leaving a majority of Kenyan children on the periphery of education as they attend schools where they only pick age and little else. Some national schools are known to charge up to Sh120,000 per year. Many less-than-average schools charge up to Sh50,000 per year with countless hidden charges. The third category of schools and which would be the next best alternative to majority of parents who cannot afford the exorbitant school fees do not deliver value for money.
Previous Government guidelines on maximum school fees charged have been flouted with abandon as school heads cite the ever-growing cost of living. For some families, having to fork out even just Sh20,000 a year to take their sons and daughters through third-world secondary schools is next to impossible. This means some very talented children may never reach their potential even in the cheapest of schools.
According to the 2012 Economic Survey, gross enrolment rates in primary schools have been sustained to above 100 per cent, while the net enrolment rates have risen to almost 90 per cent in the recent past. The report also notes the number of children completing primary education has risen to over 800,000 – a commendable feat by any standards. However, the same report shows that approximately 30 per cent of primary school pupils fail to transit to secondary school because secondary schooling is yet to be made a part of free basic education.
Implementation of free or even affordable fees would go a long way in guaranteeing automatic progression. This is a target that recently came within sight following recommendations by a task force formed by President Uhuru Kenyatta. The task force chaired by former Higher Education Assistant Minister Kilemi Mwiria, which had been mandated to review ways of making secondary education accessible to all school-age youth through establishing realistic unit costs, in October recommended that the Government increases financial injection in secondary schools by more than 100 per cent to cushion parents from high fees. While these were mere recommendations, expectations were that the Government through the Ministry of Education would find a way of adopting some of them – if only to cap the amounts parents have to pay to keep their kids in school.
This won’t be the case though. Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi a while back – ingnoring the recommendations of the task force – directed school heads to stick to the fee circular guidelines that the Government issued in 2013.Through this directive, Prof Kaimenyi has not just shattered dreams of brilliant but needy students, he has also ensured education remains a class aspect and something that is only accessible to the highest bidder to the exclusion of talented but needy children.
Instead of helping bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, Kenya's brand of education has actually turned into a scaring, even immoral enterprise where the best among us actually fall into the abyss through the cracks of poverty. The situation is made worse by the very undeveloped structure of our system which places a premium on academic achievement above everything else and which inadvertently defines a failure at a very young age due to the kind of schools one attends. Kaimenyi should be told that Kenya isn’t running schools any more. We are running segregation clubs!
Reference : www.standardmedia.co.ke