Most teachers ‘weaker than pupils’

Some Kenyan teachers are weaker than their pupils in class, a new UN report shows.

The Unesco survey says most primary school teachers lack complete mastery of the subjects they teach.

In a global monitoring report released on Tuesday, the UN agency says that millions of Kenyan children are failing to learn the basics despite much improved access to primary education.

Teacher training is weak in Kenya, the report found, citing a 2010 survey of primary schools in which Class Six teachers scored an average of only 61 per cent in maths tests designed for their pupils.

“None of the teachers had complete mastery of the subject,” Unesco observed.

The country has made “great strides in the numbers reaching the end of primary school,” partly because the country abolished school fees in 2003, the UN education agency noted.

But Kenya ranks among 14 countries in the world known to have more than one million children out of school, due primarily to high rates of dropouts, Unesco said.

In addition, about 30 per cent of Kenyan learners who complete four years of schooling are unable to read, the report added.

Among the causes for this lag in literacy, Unesco said, are poor quality of teaching, lack of textbooks, increasing class sizes and sharp disparities in education in various parts of the country.

“Access [to education] is not the only crisis- poor quality is holding back learning even for those who make it to school,” Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova wrote in the foreword to the 462-page report.

OVERLOADED TEACHERS

Teacher education institutions in Kenya often fail to upgrade weak subject knowledge, partly because trainees are overloaded with learning demands, the report suggested.

They are required to take up to 10 subjects and participate in teaching practice in the first year.

“This leaves little time to fill gaps in subject knowledge,” the report said.

Moreover, educators expected to impart skills to trainees have themselves received no instruction in training teachers for basic education, Unesco noted.

Universal access to primary education has resulted in a shortage of teachers, the report added. The ratio of students to teachers rose by 45 per cent between 1999 and 2009, reaching an average of 47 pupils for every teacher.

“Absenteeism exacerbates the problem of teacher shortages,” the report said.

In a typical Kenyan primary school, which faces a shortage of four teachers, 13 per cent of teachers were absent during school visits, Unesco noted.

Kenya’s education funding method fails to provide needed resources to parts of the country with large numbers of school leavers, the report said.

It adds: “The capitation grant is distributed on the basis of number of students enrolled — a disadvantage for the 12 counties in the arid and semi-arid areas that are home to 46 per cent of the out-of-school population.”

Educational shortcomings are said to be especially acute in the Dadaab refugee complex.

Nine out of 10 teachers there are drawn from refugee communities, but only two per cent are qualified, the UN agency said.

In addition, only 36 percent of school-age children in Dadaab are enrolled in school.

Unesco also acknowledged that Kenya has achieved some major gains in education measurements.

GOAL ACHIEVED

National spending on education rose from 5 percent of gdp in 1999 to nearly 7 percent in 2011, the report noted.

Along with Zimbabwe, Kenya is one of two sub-Saharan countries expected to achieve universal completion of primary education in the coming years. By 2018, all children in urban parts of Kenya will complete primary school; in rural areas, however, that goal will not be reached until about 10 years later, Unesco calculated.

Kenya has also improved accountability for teachers who breach professional standards of conduct, the report said. “New regulations state that a teacher convicted of a sexual offence against a pupil is to be deregistered,” the report observed.

Continued poverty is a consequence of failing to provide basic education skills to large numbers of citizens, Unesco said.

Burgeoning population is also linked to poor education achievement among women, the report added.

The decline in overall fertility in Kenya has slowed in recent years, “held back by persistently high fertility among women with less education,” the study said.

“The population of Kenya is expected to reach 59 million in 2025; if the lack of progress in education had not slowed the fertility decline, it could have been at least 15 million lower,” Unesco declared.