When class and race were big factors in enrolment

Some 50 years ago, education in Kenya was a preserve for the sons and daughters of chiefs, leading farmers, clergymen, teachers, hospital paramedical staff and clerks.

The children of the ordinary mwananchi had to battle – the hard way — to join the mainstream.

The provision of primary school education was not only divided along class lines, it was also riddled with racism.

Racial segregation in education meant there were separate schools for Africans, Asians and Europeans — each type offering a different curriculum, for a specific purpose.

EUROPEAN SCHOOLS

The European schools were the best equipped, and offered good quality education that prepared the students to become managers.

The African schools lacked facilities and offered an inferior type of education preparing students to become mostly clerks.

Racial segregation in education was based on the colonial policy that each race had a different role to play in the economy.

The Africans were supposed to serve as cheap labour and there was, therefore, no need to develop a sound education for them.

Thus after independence, Kenya embarked on a series of radical reforms to correct these anomalies.

The statistics on education at the dawn of independence in 1963 indicate that there were only 891,000 pupils in the 6,000 primary schools.

In 1965, only 40 per cent of the primary school-age girls were in school.

ENROLMENT

At independence, the country had only 150 secondary schools with an enrolment of 30,000 students and that is before more enrolment at the brought the number to 500,000 students.

At the same period, the number of secondary school teachers had increased from 1,500 to 20,000.

The universities were the worst hit because the colonial regime did not want to train many graduates, arguing that there would be no jobs for them.

In 1963, Kenya had only 538 students at the University of East Africa, and another 600 students overseas.

Although some children got places in schools, they still suffered because of the racist approach to education.

Again, there was no unified approach to the curriculum.

RELIGIOUS GROUPS

Each school was managed by the religious group that had founded it.

The Anglicans, Catholics, Independents and other sects managed their own primary and secondary schools — each with its own curriculum.

There were also examinations for the various races in Kenya, with the black people sitting for the Kenya African Preliminary Examination (KAPE).

The more established of these sects had established training institutions then known as “normal” schools.

These produced teachers for the schools.

The ‘normal’ schools were peculiar in that they were supposed to train Africans from ‘primitivity into civilisation’.

And the products of these institutions were supposed to be agents of change in the villages they were sent to work.

This was the chaotic state of affairs inherited by the new African Government in 1963.

The Government started by banning the sectorial approach to formal education.

The whole system was unified under the Ministry of Education, which was responsible for the development of a unified school curriculum, administration of education, administration of public examinations, employment of teachers and their supply of school equipment.

BANNED RACIST APPROACH

The Government banned the racist approach to the provision of education.

Any child was now entitled to enter any primary school of their choice as long as the parents were able to pay the school fees.

The government also created the Teachers Service Commission and the Teachers Remuneration Committee to work out the unified scheme of service for all the teachers in the country.

While the government did this, the parents were asked to help put up school buildings and other facilities.

These were known as Harambee schools and they outnumbered the government schools. 

FREE PRIMARY EDUCATION

In 1974, the government ordered the introduction of free primary education and in 1978 the free primary school milk programme was started.

With this, 86 per cent of school-age children enrolled in schools and this was thought to be the highest in Africa.

While Harambee worked wonders for primary schools, severe strains were being felt at the secondary school level.

Only 13 per cent of the children sitting for the Certificate of Primary Education found places in Government-aided secondary school.

Soon parents turned to building Harambee secondary schools.

For a while after independence, anybody who got to Form Four quite easily secured himself a job.

Others went to Forms Five and Six to prepare for university education.

ONE UNIVERSITY

Getting a place at this level too was difficult since there was only one university. 

The University of East Africa had three constituents in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. 

But all three colleges later became independent, with the University of Nairobi offering 2,000 places every year.

Many Kenyans sought education elsewhere.

Some moved to India and at home they built institutes of science and technology, again on Harambee basis to teach skills that only government technical institutions such as the Kenya Polytechnic were offering.

Earlier, before independence, there were the famous airlifts with some Kenyans going to the US, Russia and other countries on scholarships.

These were to come back and fill some of the positions in the government after the colonial administrators left for South Africa, Rhodesia and Britain.

And those were the pioneer days of the education sector in Kenya after independence.

A lot has happened ever since.