The government announced in January that up to 150,000 students who sat the KCPE exam would miss places in form one. This, understandably, made headlines and triggered questions on whether the trend should be allowed to continue.
The disclosure by Education CS Fred Matiang’i came during the selection of students who joined form one. It means we are grappling with the largest number of likely school dropouts the country has seen in the last decade.
It is a worrying trend. If we factor in the thousands of other bright, young Kenyans who miss out on education because they come from disadvantaged backgrounds, it would surely dawn on us that we are staring at a crisis.
Two months ago, I accompanied Community Scholarship Selection Board members for Equity Bank’s Wings to Fly programme to some parts of the country during home verification visits. One of those visited was Brian Maina, who scored 416 marks. He lives with his blind grandmother who cannot afford to pay his school fees.
This is what we can call generational poverty, where the grandmother was not able to educate Brian’s mother (her daughter) who performed well and was admitted to secondary school. Brian could not afford secondary school fees.
All this has raised the question of whether we are doing enough in response to such cases as a country. The people who such students turn to – their parents, immediate relatives, neighbours or religious leaders – are already overwhelmed. They are either struggling themselves or have other financial burdens.
Some are looking to corporates such as Equity bank, which is already catering to a big number of students through its Wings to Fly scholarship programme.
This year, Equity Group Foundation, which administers the scholarships, received 20,300 applications from needy students who sat the KCPE exam and are not able to finance their secondary school education.
The high application rate, presented an emotional challenge, as the foundation could only absorb 2,000 students.
This brought the total number of scholarships awarded under the Wings to Fly programme to 10,377 in five years. The biggest challenge was how to share the 2,000 scholarships amongst the 20,300 applicants.
This raised an important question: Is there need for corporates to do more to plug this gap by providing more scholarships to needy students? The answer is yes and here's why.
The reason is leadership. Corporates have always stepped in to help and Equity Bank has been a leader in this front for the past five years. The bank and its partners have routinely paid school fees for more students in the past half-decade than the rest of corporate Kenya combined, every year.
In this age of instant communication and close public scrutiny of corporations, many companies have placed – at least rhetorically – an emphasis on contributing to society, both through community commitments to charity and by making their business practices more socially responsible.
But despite the advances we have made as a country in bridging our social and economic differences, what most people fail to realise is that Kenya’s challenges may have outpaced current philanthropic ventures.
Today, the cumulative wealth of the most generous donors seems a pittance compared with the billions of shillings worth of need. Generosity is no longer enough.
The consensus is there is need to do more. This is why more individuals, companies and development organisations should join the list of givers and help bridge the gap by providing more resources to sustain more scholarships for needy students.
In the corporate world, as elsewhere, nothing speaks louder than money. Most Kenyans reasonably expect corporates to support social causes in a meaningful way and there is no better way to do this than releasing more cash to pay school fees for needy students.
As a nation, we need to invest more in our youth and their education. This is the only way to ensure sustainable development and cushion our education system against the shocks that have worsened the transition rate from primary to secondary school, even as the number of pupils sitting the KCPE exam increases each year.
The writer is a member of Equity Bank’s Community Scholarship Selection Board CSSB.