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No-Fee Plan Floods Kenya
Schools
By Danna Harman
Christian
Science Monitor Anne Ng'ang'a has gone back
to her ancestral home in central Kenya for a couple of days to regain her
strength. The headmistress of the Olympic Primary School here was feeling
overwhelmed by an inundation of new young learners since the new year
began. "These are - how shall
I put it - chaotic times," whispers Ms. Ng'ang'a's hoarse deputy,
Ruth Namulumou. When classes resumed at the
beginning of the month, teachers, parents, and students were all coming to
grips with a hastily implemented campaign promise by new President Mwai
Kibaki: the elimination of fees at the country's 17,000 public schools. As word of the policy spread
throughout Kenya's towns, villages, and slums, kids seemed to come out of
the woodwork. Some had never been in a classroom before; others had been
whiling away their time in cheap, unlicensed alternatives to the
government schools. This is Kenya's latest
attempt at free primary education and by its own admission is doing so
without a road map. In the past, the plans have failed because of lack of
funds. But the government says that if it can clean up the corruption that
plagued the country during 27 years under former President Daniel arap Moi,
it should have enough money to make it work this time around. Some 3,400 new students
showed up at Olympic for the first day of classes - this in addition to
the 1,720 that were already there. Countrywide, there were over a
half-million new students seeking enrollment, according to the Ministry of
Education. But accommodating all these
new students is proving no easy task. At Olympic, for example, irate
parents who were turned away by the headmistress "called her names,
tried to beat her up, and threatened to burn down her office,"
recalls Ms. Namulunou with a shudder. "My daughter deserves
the best," says George Odhiambo, an unemployed father who was ready
to light the fire. "I always knew this. Only before I could not
afford to do anything about it." The state of Africa's
schools In Africa, almost half the
primary-school-aged children, or some 42 million (most of them girls), do
not attend school. And only half of those who are enrolled are expected to
complete the full primary cycle of studies, according to a report released
last month by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO). Kenya, where more than 70
percent of children attend some form of primary school, is better off than
most. In some two dozen African countries, says UNESCO, less than 20
percent of the school-age population goes to class. Mr. Kibaki is not the first
Kenyan president to try providing free education. Jomo Kenyatta and Mr.
Moi, Kenya's previous two presidents, both abolished fees for a period.
But on each occasion, the fees were soon reintroduced when the full cost
of the experiment became apparent. Initial estimates last week
by a special treasury and education ministry committee show that at least
$162 million will be required to carry out the policy change, including
the hiring of 50,000 more teachers. Even before the new policy was
proposed, Kenya had a shortage of 20,000 teachers in primary schools
alone. But Education Minister
George Saitoti insists that the old government was so corrupt and
inefficient that by simply running Kenya honestly, the new government
could find the money needed to pay for the change. "We cannot let the
children down," Mr. Saitoti says. "Yes there are some problems
with the plan, but our job is to address those problems." So why the quick
implementation? "We had to make good on
promises - we did not have time to plan," says Jimi Wanjigi, adviser
to the education minister, defensively. "So we decided to dive into
the deep end and just learn how to swim." Mr. Wanjigi adds that a
special task force has been set up to study how similar transitions to
free primary education were made in other countries and to put together
"homegrown" solutions to the various kinks arising here. "But really," he
says, "there are fewer problems than it seems. Just a lack of
classrooms and teachers and desks. But there is a lot of goodwill to make
it work, which is what counts." The task force might be hard
pressed to find an example of a well-organized transition to free
schooling in Africa. In neighboring Uganda, which introduced a similar
plan three years ago, the move was equally chaotic. "There are still
schools so overflowing that kids study outside with no roofs," says a
UN official in Kampala, Uganda, who asked not to be named. The official
charges that in Uganda, as in Kenya, the policy was instituted as a way to
find quick favor with the population and was ill thought out. Kenya's educational problems
go beyond just access to the classroom. In 23 African countries for which
statistics were available, 15 percent of pupils had to repeat a year, and
the percentage of teachers in secondary education without qualifications
is as high as 55 percent. In Kenya, many primary-school graduates cannot
read or write. A computer, a copier, and
a wall Olympic is the top public
school in Nairobi, with its pupils routinely scoring highest marks in the
national exams. Olympic boasts a computer, a copy machine, and a perimeter
wall around its backyard, which separates it from the slum beyond. In the
past, parents of students here would pay a one-time entrance fee of 10,000
shillings (about $126) and an additional 300 shillings (about $4) per
semester for ongoing costs such as buying chalk and providing fresh
drinking water. But for most parents, in a country where over half the
population survives on less than $1 a day, this kind of school was a
luxury they couldn't afford. Twelve-year-old Helen Mutheu
has attended Olympic "her whole life," she says. Her mother
hawks tomatoes on the side of the road. Her father works as a cleaner in
an office building downtown. Together, saving shilling by shilling, they
have managed to put all their six children through state primary school. Helen's school uniform
sweater is fraying at the collar. She had nothing today for lunch, and she
shares a notebook and pencil with her best friend, Rosemary Makungu. She
is a little worried about the influx of new students.
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