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Education in Kenya- The Thirst for Knowledge
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1.
Education in Kitui
Kitui
has 606 primary schools, scattered over an area of 20,500
sq.km. The
teacher:pupil ratio is 30:1 in primary schools and 16:1 in
secondary schools. There is a need to address accessibility
and cultural issues to improve school enrolment and
completion rates in the district.
The primary school going population aged 6-13 years
was 129,913 in 1999 representing 27% of the total
population and comprised of 65,542 males and 64,371
females. The total is expected to rise to 158,359 by the
year 2008. The total primary enrolment in 1999 was 132972
with 47.6% for boys and a lower 48.1% for girls. Although
there were 53,383 (26,992 boys and 26,391 girls)
secondary-school going children aged 14-17 years in 1999,
only 6,860 boys and 6,866 girls (about 25%) were enrolled
in secondary schools. |
Thus,
there is a very low transition from Primary to Secondary
Schools.
Empirical
evidence shows that 13% of the urban poor have never
attended school at all while the comparative rural figure
is 29%. Of the poor, only 12% of those in rural areas have
reached secondary education while for the urban poor the
figure rises to 28%.
Education
is not enough by itself to escape from poverty. Many well
educated Kenyans remain poor on account of lack of access
to opportunities. However without education, capacity for
accessing opportunity is very much reduced. |
| Education
is very important to the Kenyans. A major part of the typical household budget
goes towards school fees and costs for school uniforms. Every day in Kitui you see hordes of children heading either towards school, or from
school towards home, their brightly coloured uniforms contrasting with the
reddish-brown dusty landscape.
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Education
is seen as a vital part of the struggle to overcome the enormous difficulties
faced by the majority of people in Kitui. Not only can education offer the
potential of securing a better type of employment, but it can also help open
minds to tackle gender issues such as the role of women, womens’ property
rights, and so forth.
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| The restrictions on women’s access to, and control of,
property and resources are a major contributing factor to poverty in
these Districts. The Diocese has a programme to improve women’s status, and
hence access and control, by educating project groups on appropriate gender
roles in community water development, and in other areas also. Schools
are generally multi- denominational.
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Even schools managed by Catholic religious, male
or female, will often have less than 50% Catholic students. Primary education is
free in Kenya: however private schools are very popular. School fees are
generally in the region of Ks3500 to Ks4000 per term (€45 to €50), with
boarding schools charging twice this amount. In times of hardship, such as now,
parents have enormous difficulty in raising cash for fees and uniforms.
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As
explained elsewhere, the importance of school fees and school uniforms is
twofold. Firstly, if a child can get access to school, he/she is probably
guaranteed adequate feeding and
nutrition for five days of the week- and the remaining family foodstocks can be
divided among the other family members. Secondly,
school uniforms are often a prerequisite for entry to school- and once attending
school, the uniform minimises “difference” for children who
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might otherwise suffer
discrimination or stigma due to the HIV/AIDS factor.
Many
Parishes run Polytechnics which teach skills such as carpentry to boys, and
dressmaking or needlework to girls. Students in the Polytechnics may have either
insufficient points from Primary school to proceed to secondary school level, or
may be prevented from entering secondary for financial or other reasons.
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| The
provision of targeted funding from support groups in Ireland can achieve much
with what are relatively modest amounts of money in Irish terms. For example,
the Dalkey Outreach Group has provided a major part of the funding for the
Polytechnic in Endau Parish for provision of sewing machines, a knitting
machine, and sewing materials. |
They
have also sponsored the fees of two students
in the past year. Holy Redeemer parish in Bray, Co. Wicklow, has been twinned with Ikanga parish in
Kitui, since the early
80s. They send out about €15,000 per year, and when that money is not
required for famine relief, the main priority is educating children in secondary
schools.
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| Some projects looking for assistance right now are:
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| Endau Parish Polytechnic- As is commonplace in other
Polytechnics we visited, practice dressmaking is done with paper materials as
they cannot afford fabrics. |
The quality of the work produced by the girls
is very high, and provision of good-quality materials for classroom use
would allow the option of selling the finished garments. |
| Mutomo Nursery and Primary School- Mutomo is in
the southern, and very arid, part of the Kitui district. The Mutomo Mission
Hospital, which was founded by the Irish Sisters of Mercy in 1962, is a major
facility in Mutomo. The Parish of Mutomo constructed a Nursery School on parish
lands adjacent to the Hospital in 2002. The school is run by the Sisters of St
Joseph. There are three
classes at the present time, with approximately 30 children in each class. When
the new school year begins January 2007 next, they will require a new classroom for
the new intake. This school began
three years ago and added a classroom each year since.
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Standard 2 at Mutomo greets a visitor
from Friends of Kitui |
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| This school provides
feeding for the students, and as a result the children are healthy and vigorous,
and a joy to observe. A sum of approximately €5,000 would provide the new
classroom. The ambition of the Parish is to extend the school to an 8-class,
full primary school by adding a classroom per year for the next five years.
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Ikutha Polytechnic for Girls
This school has premises, but is very short of
equipment. As in Endau, the Polytechnic provides second level vocational
training for girls and offers them the opportunity to earn money as dressmakers
or seamstresses. They currently have only four sewing machines for about 30
pupils, three for the second
years and only one for the first year students. As is commonplace in other
Polytechnics we visited, practice dressmaking is done with paper materials as
they cannot afford fabrics.
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For More Information Contact:
Friends of Kitui
Dalkey, Co. Dublin, Ireland
Tel: +353-1-285-0988
Internet: info@friendsofkitui.com
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