“Education
beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equaliser of the
conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery.” These immortal words uttered by American
educational reformer Horace Mann clearly show the integral role of education in
societal progress.
Unfortunately, the casual handling of the sector in Kenya downplays this significance.
The slow progress towards quality education as envisioned in national and global goals such as Sustainable Development Goal 4 and Vision 2030 should surely raise questions.
On paper, the country has made great progress on the policy front and resource allocation. Estimates reveal that education sector expenditure has remained stable at five per cent of the GDP between 2013 and 2023. This positions Kenya among the leading countries in education spending, meeting regional and international benchmarks in the process.
However, these massive investments do not reflect positively on the learning outcomes, as highlighted in the 2024 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination results, where over 350,000 candidates scored grades below the D+ pass mark.
Unfortunately, going by the various research reports, such results are not entirely unexpected. For example, Usawa Agenda’s 2023 SESS report findings reveal widespread inequitable distribution of factors that influence learning outcomes, such as teachers and learning materials.
Recently, while appearing before the Parliamentary Constitution Implementation Oversight Committee (CIOC), the Teachers Service Commission CEO decried a shortage of over 98,000 teachers, a number that is expected to rise following the rollout of senior schools.
For those who might wonder why the CEO appeared before the CIOC and not the Committee on Education, education is a right enshrined under Article 43 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010. Therefore, any gap in the sector derails the implementation of the highest law in the land.
Unsurprisingly, the CEO attributed this huge deficit to budgetary constraints. The constraints have often been cited in unforgivable shortcomings such as delayed capitation to schools and the haphazard implementation of transition to Grade 9 in the Competency-Based Curriculum.
These commonplace hitches attributable to budgetary shortfalls in the sector occur even when the Auditor General’s reports give feedback of qualified opinion on the expenditures of the sector in every audit circle.
In the recent audit report, the veracity of disbursements worth billions of shillings in subsidies to free primary and day secondary education and capitation for junior secondary schools could not be confirmed. This imbalance, the audit notes, results from the unreliable NEMIS system, which guides such disbursements.
The question as to why such a key system for service delivery remains unreliable, even after the government spent over Sh200 million on its upgrade, perhaps should be left to the anti-corruption commission to answer, given the Auditor General has raised questions over this expenditure.
These dejecting wanton wastages, coupled with reports of high levels of deficiencies in key factors that promote learning, require serious interrogation and urgent remedy. That is, unless as a nation, we are intentionally hellbent on bungling this key sector together with our aspirations for sustainable development.
The writers work at Usawa Agenda
