Education - A Right? A Privilege? A Dream?

As the K.C.S.E (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education) kicked off this week and we spent time at our football office making success cards for their K.C.P.E candidates (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education), I’ve been thinking a lot about education and how many people take it for granted.

When I was in secondary school in the UK, there were no university tuition fees – as long as you got the marks and could be supported for the duration of your course, it was relatively easy to do a degree. I had 7 years of free primary education and HAD to attend secondary school until I was 16, regardless of the marks I scored. I actually ended up doing 6 years in secondary school and all my parents had to pay for was my uniform and some stationery.

I don’t think I actually appreciated just how lucky I was until I came to Kenya.

Over the past 3 years, my eyes have been opened to the struggles that some people have to go to just to get an education. One of the first things that brought this home was on my first visit to Kibera. I was told by my guide that if parents are going to ensure their children have one decent set of clothes, it will be a school uniform as that makes a statement about the fact that their children are in school.

I’ve come to realise that “school” in Kibera covers a wide range of facilities. There are 3 government schools which are said to be accessible to the children of Kibera. With an estimated population of 1 million people, 3 schools will never cater for all the children. Some children go uneducated while many others attend “informal” schools. These can be anything from a nice building in the compound of a church to a room built with wood, mud or iron sheets in the heart of one of the 13 villages. The thing they have in common is that most of the teachers are unqualified. Many have been through secondary education but never gone on to do a teaching qualification so volunteer as teachers in informal schools. Some are unpaid, others take home a small allowance whenever funds are available.

The NGO community supports a large number of informal schools by providing feeding programs. This is a way of encouraging parents to send their children to school whilst ensuring that the children have at least one nutritional meal a day. With many families in Kibera reported to be living on $1 a day, these feeding programs can provide vital support.

Organisations such as Kibera Mpira Mtaani, the football project we work with, realise the importance of education and are providing free study facilities and after-school tuition to students in an attempt to boost their grades and give them a better chance in life. This November will see their first set of students sit their KCPE exams and we wait to see what impact this program has had.

With the recent introduction of “free secondary education”, it was anticipated that more students would be able to attend secondary school. In reality, for those from disadvantaged backgrounds who score well at the end primary school, they still face an uphill struggle to attend a good secondary school. Some students might be offered places at national or provincial schools but never attend or drop out as families fail to find the resources to pay for boarding accommodation, books, equipment and all the other costs that are still incurred in today’s system of “free” education.

In the recent mid-term holidays, you can guarantee that students will have been sent home to collect school fees and not all will return with the cash in hand. For families this is a tough situation. For projects such as children’s homes it can be a nightmare. One of our children’s homes has 10 children sitting their end of primary school exams next month and already has several children in secondary school. Each term, they face the problem of finding school fees, fares, pocket money etc to keep children in school.

One of the students, who is coming to the end of Form 1 in secondary school, I have known for 3 years now. From the first day we met he told me he wanted to be an astronaut and study at Kennedy Space Centre. Three years on, he has earned a place in a good school and still dreams of working for NASA. While it’s great to hear of such ambition, it’s upsetting to know that unless we find school fees or scholarships for such bright students they might not even finish secondary school. Other children tell us they want to be doctors, journalists, pilots and teachers...for many children in developed countries these are realistic ambitions. How fair is it that for others it depends on how hard they work but at the end of the day money will determine how far their education goes?