Free Secondary Education Favours Wealthy Children

When the free secondary education was rolled out in 2008, expectations were high that it would replicate the success of the free primary education, boosting literacy levels among the poor Kenyan children.

It was also a drive to address the social inequality exhibited through low transition to post-primary education for children from poverty-stricken areas.

But this was not to be case.

The introduction of the free primary education (FPE) has been touted as the most effective social equalisation programme, opening doors for children from poor backgrounds to attain basic education and giving them a chance to scale the societal ladder.

The FPE programme has proven successful, raising the number of children enrolment from six million at its inception in 2003 to 8.2 million in 2007 and 8.6 million in 2008.

However, this success is running into headwinds especially at the secondary level where the main beneficiaries are children from well-to-do families.

Educationists say they are taking a huge most places in national and provincial secondary schools due to the admission criteria used.

The current admission criterion which is basically merit-based favours children from rich families who attend private primary schools, giving them room to perform better than the children from poor backgrounds who learn in public schools that in most cases lack learning materials, reported the latest Public Expenditure Review by the Ministry of Planning.

"Public spending at the secondary level has disproportionately benefited the wealthier quartile groups at the expense of the poorest quartile making public spending on secondary education skewed in favour of the rich," said Edward Sambili, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Planning.

Ministry of Planning says up to 25 per cent of the well-off Kenyan children have access to 75 per cent of the best public national and provincial secondary schools.

Prof. Sambili says children from rich families tend to enrol in private primary schools or top performing public primary schools which perform well in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) thereby getting admission slots in public national and provisional secondary schools.

Analysts fault the current funding criteria which does not differentiate schools on the basis of existing facilities and educational material, but giving a blanket annual allocation of an estimated Sh19,000 per term as tuition fees and learning materials for each student.

They say to ensure that the free secondary education (FSE) meets its objective of benefiting the poor, it should limit the number of pupils from private primary schools joining public national and provincial secondary schools to ensure that children from public schools are not locked out.

The government says, the transition rate from primary to secondary has increased over time.

The increase is due to the high number of enrolment and retention at primary level.

For instance, secondary enrolment has grown from 1.18 million students in 2007 to 1.3 million in 2008 pushing to General Enrolment Rate (GER) from 38 per cent to 42.5 per cent.

But the fear is, majority of these students are from well-to-do families.

The government acknowledges that unlike the FSE, the free universal primary education has been pro-poor as the poorer Kenyans have more children of primary school age hence benefiting more from the public investment in education at this level.

Education specialists have attributed the skewed benefit to past policy decision on admission criteria based on the quota system and investment in private schools.

"For a long time in the 1970s and 1980s, the quota system used to ensure pupils from regions with under-developed infrastructure had access to leading schools, irrespective of their scores," said Mr. Kihumba Kamotho, an education specialist.

Mr. Kamotho says the introduction of the cost-sharing system in the mid 1980s led to disparities in the acquisition of instructional materials, equipment and physical facilities such as classrooms and workshops.

In addition, the rapid development of private primary schools at the height of falling standards in public schools led to a shift with parents with the wherewithal opting to enrol their children in the private schools.

Majority of these schools are located in urban areas leaving the rural areas with underperforming, under funded public schools.

Good performance of private primary schools has seen most parents shun public primary schools.

Each year when the KCPE results are released private schools dominate the listing.

Given that admission to secondary school is based on performance, the top national schools simply admit the best performers without looking at their economic background opening the door for children from private primary schools who have been dominating the KCPE examinations.

It is estimated that private primary schools have not more than 10 per cent of the entire KCPE candidates, but they end up taking at least 85 per cent of the form one places in all national and provincial schools.

"Children from resource-disadvantaged areas such as the slums and other economic hardship areas had little opportunity of accessing top secondary schools as their performance in KCPE lagged behind those from well-endowed backgrounds who have access to private schools," said Mr. Kamotho.

To lift these schools to the same level playing field, the government has committed more funds to upgrade learning facilities for district-based secondary schools in an effort to address the existing inequality in physical facilities.

Locked out

With many poor children locked out of secondary schools, the possibilities of breaking from the cycle of abject poverty dims.

Mr. Kamotho reckons that one of the hallmarks of a strong educational system is how fully it addresses the principle of equity which is a system's ability to ensure that all learners have equal opportunities to benefit from a country's educational resources.

While presenting the 2010/2011 Budget, the Minister of Finance Uhuru Kenyatta allocated an additional Sh2 billion for free secondary education bringing the total allocation for the period to Sh16.2 billion.

However, the additional funds will be allocated equally among all secondary students hence not addressing the emerging challenges.

With a growing number of admissions the government acknowledges the emerging challenges of overstretched facilities.

"Lack of adequate infrastructure at all levels of education undermines effort to enhance access and equity to education hence making it difficult to address the existing disparities in regional and gender," notes the government in its First Annual Progress Report on the implementation of Vision 2030.

Whereas there has a notable increase in the number of school facilities, the growth has been much higher in the private sector than the public sector.

For instance, between 2003 and 2007 the growth of primary schools and secondary schools in the private sector rose by 76 per cent and 167 per cent while in the public sector primary schools growth was two per cent and 43 per cent for secondary schools.

The rapid growth in private secondary schools does not benefit the poor due to the high cost of accessing such educational facilities.

The slow growth in public secondary schools is attributed to the high cost of putting up such facilities.

Despite increase in government budgetary allocation, a huge proportion of the funds are used to foot recurrent expenditures such as salary payment, purchase of learning and teaching materials and other operational costs.

Challenges facing the free education programme include staff shortage and weak implementation structures of the programme.

Education minister, Sam Ongeri says the shortage in both primary and secondary levels currently stands at 66,000 and is expected to rise to 77,000 next year.

With minimal expansion of secondary education facilities to accommodate increased demand for free secondary education, competition for the few places will continue to be stiff pitting children attending well endowed private primary schools against those in public crowded and under-funded primary schools.