Let us engage in genuine talks to save our education system

A class in session at El Adow Primary school, Wajir County. The government has done little to address problems facing education in the north. PHOTO | BRUHAN MAKONG | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Our education system is strewn with opacity and data managers tend to exaggerate accomplishments.
  • The poor are now being alienated by education, technology and political patronage.
  • The system lacks the needed flexibility to address context specific needs.

For us to reform the education system, and the attendant curriculum, we need, as a nation, to engage all and sundry in defining the learning crisis that affects the nation.

We need to have national dialogue focusing on the numerous mini-crises in education that are holding back the general development of the nation that is likely to lead us into a long period of stagnation.

BLIND EYE

The numerous crises in the sector can be summarised into four: Poor learning outcomes, high inequality, slow progress and low levels of teacher preparedness and competency.

Our education system is strewn with opacity and data managers tend to exaggerate accomplishments and cover up performance problems thus turning blind eye to areas that need targeted support and investment.

We have been enrolling children in school in large numbers since 2003 but schooling should not be confused with learning.

CALENDAR

Assessment for the last decade and a half indicates our children have not been learning anything in school.

Standard Five and Six learners cannot tell the date on a calendar correctly and more than 70 per cent of them cannot tell time on the face of a clock.

The lack of learning in schools is a function of overcrowded classrooms we have had since 2003, lack of vigour in teacher training and pure non-accountability for duty bearers.

This is evidenced by the large number of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education candidates who are flopping in the examination since 2015.

FAILURE

As a nation, we have failed to join the dotted lines when teaching the story of the new education system and the curriculum we adopt.

Out of this failure, we are unable to identify the exact spot at which the rains began beating us.

We lost the plot when we hurriedly implemented the political instruction for Free Primary Education and since we have not learned a thing; we are going down the drain with Free Secondary Education in 2018.

We have not invested fully in teacher training colleges in the last two decades and the results are there for all to see.

APPLICATIONS

Our teachers are ill prepared for the 21st century and the profession is losing its lustre due to this failure.

Teacher training colleges are not receiving enough applications for admission while some are reporting near empty male dormitories.

How can this situation obtain and we keep quiet when the country needs over 40,972 teachers in primary schools and 63,849 in secondary?

How do we plan to realise the 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary school? Have we as a country resigned to fate that our children should go to school and not learn?

DISCRIMINATION

Has the Teachers Service Commission analysed and developed a strategy for encouraging more male teachers into the fold?

What is being done about staff rationalisation between urban and rural areas?

A cursory look at the landscape and discussion with teachers points towards discrimination by gender within the force.

Women teachers are favoured in postings while males are thrown into far flung areas with total disregard to their family and welfare.

EXODUS

Our education system is not an equaliser.

It is a wedge being driven between the haves and the have-nots. The poor are being left to their own devices.

The system lacks the needed flexibility to address context specific needs.

Have a look at the insecurity up north and the exodus of teachers versus the helplessness of the TSC and the ministry, to appreciate the enormity of the matter.

STAGNATION

The failure to have the education system and the curriculum to serve the needs of alienated groups means it severely hobbles them and drives them farther from the centre.

The poor are now being alienated by education, technology and political patronage.

If we do not shift our gaze and spare education, we should prepare for stagnation and rolling back of democratic gains made in the last two decades.

The writer is a consultant in education [email protected]