John Arika is a standard seven pupil in one of the rural public primary school. Last year his parents intended to transfer him to one of the city primary schools. But when he took an interview the teachers realized that “the boy can not be able to read or write comprehensively. We realized that he was supposed to join Standard Two or Three.” Notwithstanding that his school is well equipped with text books and other learning materials from the FPE programme funds.
Because of his age and “impressive performance” in his current school his parents decided to let him continue schooling in same school where he was promoted to Standard Seven. As per the school performance next year he will be sitting for his KCPE examination.
Arika is not alone in this educational stratification that is prevalent in Kenya's learning system – a chasm between academies and public schools, town or city public schools and rural areas public schools, learning mode for the poor and the rich.
Research by International Child Support Fund Africa (ICS) - a Dutch NGO reveals that many students may be left behind in an education system that does take care of different learners, where Kenya is cited. The research points out that providing learning material for various schools cannot be equated to improving school quality.
Lead researchers argue that notwithstanding the provision of basic input as textbooks is important to learning, particularly in very poor schools where few students have textbooks much need to be done to realize quality education.
From the textbook distribution program the NGO conducted in Western Kenya they realized an improvement in performance for students with strong initial academic background, but not for the typical student. This is likely due to distortions in the educational system in Kenya, the researchers say.
ICS provided textbook assistance to 100 schools in western Kenya over a four-year period. But after monitoring the learning and performance of the students for five years they discovered that the difference in performance in English, math and science between those schools with textbook and the schools that did not receive textbooks was not so much different.
We can reject the thinking that textbook provision will raise average student test scores by more than 0.13, the researchers say, adding that under some alternate class and subjects that received and did not receive textbooks, the improvement was insignificant. The program also failed to reduce class repetition, dropout rates, and student absence from school.
It’s evident that the textbooks improved scores for strongest students. Moreover, pupils in Standard Eighth in the textbook schools were more likely to enter secondary school than Standard Eight pupils in schools without, a finding that is consistent that textbooks are most helpful to learners with good academic background who proceed to best secondary schools.
There is reason to believe that Kenya’s curriculum and instructional materials suits “students in the well-off and less well suited to students of the poor,” the paper titled: Retrospective vs. Prospective Analysis of Schools Inputs: The Case of Flip Charts in Kenya, says, giving an example of the language of instruction in the Kenyan education system where English is assumed to be the language of instruction in all subjects save Kiswahili while most learner in rural areas are yet to master the languages hence a problem to use the textbooks effectively.
The report says that most students in lower grades had difficulty even reading the textbooks. In Class 3, only 16 per cent of the average students in program schools could read the grade 3 English textbook, and only 28 percent of their grade 4 counterparts could read the class 4 English textbook. Difficulty in reading the textbooks was less pronounced in higher grades “partly because many weaker students drop out before reaching the higher grades,” the research reveals.
The research points out that Kenyan students are extremely heterogeneous in their family background, preparation for schooling, and economic status. Middle-class children in Nairobi and other cities grow up with constant exposure to English, good nutrition, and electricity, while the children of subsistence farmers hear very little English until they go to school, have poor health and nutrition, have no electricity, often miss school, and have teachers who are often absent.
It comes to the fore that although enrollment rate in primary school has risen over the years, the curriculum remains better suited to children with educated parents.
The researchers say that once Kenya had made the decision to have a uniform, centralized curriculum for nation-building reasons, no curriculum could perfectly suit all of its students. “Even parents of average students may favor a curriculum designed for stronger students in order to secure more desirable peers in their children’s schools, because a curriculum best suited for the typical student may cause elites to switch from government schools to private schools,” they say, urging teachers also to have a right to demand appropriate textbooks for the learners as they are judged by pupils’ national examination score.
There is need to help less prepared who fall behind. “One option is remedial education for children who cannot keep up with the official curriculum.” And, allowing different schools or different programs within schools to teach the curriculum at different speeds, as in Singapore. Yes, another recent study found that tracking students by their initial achievement increased test performance for all students.
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