Classroom divisions

There can scarcely be no two words in Kenya that cause more resentment than “school fees”. It is now more than ten years since charges for state primary schools in east Africa's biggest economy were abolished by law. Yet it is an open secret that education is not truly free. In fact, fees are rising. Dorcas Mutoku, a policeman's wife whose two sons attend a public primary school in the capital, Nairobi, has found that levies have simply been renamed. She has to find the equivalent of $35 for a one-off “signing-on” fee, and pay almost as much again for admission fees. End-of-term exams, uniforms and books cost at least another $10 per child.

Kenya’s parents will get their day in court on February 21st, when a lawsuit will be heard that accuses Jacob Kaimenyi, the education minister, and Belio Kipsang, his top civil servant, of failing to implement the law. Musau Ndunda, head of the national parents’ association, which is bringing the suit, says the government is guilty of “extraordinary doublespeak” when its officials ask why anyone would pay to send their child to school. Adding to Mr Ndunda’s frustration is his awareness, shared by many thousands of Kenyan parents, that the illicit fees are not being spent on better books and facilities but are merely padding the incomes of school administrators, none of whom—as far as he can tell—has been prosecuted.

Kenya has made steady progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals to lessen poverty that were set by the UN in 2000. Foreign aid has poured into Kenya’s state education system, bringing the country as close as any in sub-Saharan Africa to achieving universal primary schooling. In the past decade about 4M new pupils entered the classroom; nearly nine out of ten school-age Kenyans under 11 are now in education.

But the row over the continued imposition of fees, and concerns over plummeting standards, make many observers wonder if the money has been wisely spent. Mwangi Kimenyi, a Kenyan economist at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says that donors and governments have broadened access to school at the cost of creating a “dysfunctional public-education system where millions of children are attending school but are not learning”.

The goal of wider enrolment, he argues, was “poorly conceived”, as it has failed to keep up standards. A World Bank report in 2013 found that Kenyan teachers were absent almost half the time. And pupils in Kenya’s state schools received on average little more than two hours of instruction a day. Another study found that only one-third of public-sector teachers scored at least 80% when tested on the curriculum they are meant to teach.

The big beneficiaries are Kenya’s private schools, where enrolment has tripled from 4% of pupils in 2005 to 12% at the latest count. They have to compete for pupils, can sack bad teachers, and offer tuition at relatively modest rates. Research by Brookings under its “Africa Growth Initiative” found that the fees for two-thirds of children in Kenyan private schools are lower than in the supposedly free state system.

Bridge International, a chain of local low-cost private schools, puts its cost per child in primary school at one-fifth of the $350 it estimates as the total real combined cost for parents and the state in the public system. “We've shown you can do a lot more with a lot less in the private sector,” says Shannon May, a co-founder. It is time, she adds, for big foreign donors to consider helping the private-education sector and for African governments to acknowledge and welcome its role in taking some of the strain off the state.

Reference : www.economist.com