Our recent experience with two secondary schools in Kenya shows the different attitudes and approaches to education. It was illuminating – one heartening, one rather dispiriting.
Heartening
Our latest trip to visit schools in Kenya took us to Elgeyo-Marakwet county in the Rift Valley. It is an impoverished rural area featuring the lowlands of the Kerio Valley and the Highlands, separated by the Elgeyo Escarpment. From the valley we climbed to Embobut village at around 9,000 feet along a steep, winding, pot-holed road. It makes Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the UK at 4,413 feet, seem like a speed bump.
Families in many parts of Kenya struggle to save for school fees, hence the need for our scholarships. And Elgeyo-Marakwet is particularly hard hit. The climate limits even subsistence farming. Only one maize crop can be grown each year, compared to 1½ or 2 in other parts of the country. And milk has to be brought in as cows don’t thrive at that altitude. And being susceptible to power cuts, keeping milk fresh is almost impossible. Worse still, the rough roads make bringing any goods in a real challenge.
In rural areas like this, FGM is also widely practiced, despite being illegal in Kenya. It remains entrenched in the culture, as young girls represent a valuable ‘asset’ and source of income to any family. Once they have been initiated, they are treated as women and available for marriage, which soon follows, with a bride price being paid.
From Embobut village we took a rough, single track for 3-4 kilometres, up and down, around hair-pin bends and steep drops, where at the end we found St Gabriel Chorwa Secondary School. This is a school in a new area for RRBF, and this is the first year that we are sponsoring children there in Grade 7 this year (their first year of junior secondary school).
Arriving at the school was quite amazing. After the hair-raising drive, the view down into the valley below is breath-taking.
Of course, for the children this is school, so I’m not sure they see it quite the same way!
And the school itself faces real challenges to secure the resources needed to provide a good education.
They are permitted by the Ministry of Education to charge around 45,000 Ksh (approx. £265) in school fees for boarding pupils. Yet they choose to charge only 23,120 Ksh (£140) knowing that that’s all that families can afford. Indeed the school Principal explained that only around half of families are able to pay even this reduced amount.
The school is doing its best to do what they can with the resources they have.
This was typified by the school matron who took in one young orphan girl who had been saved from FGM, to make sure that she got the chance of an education. I’m delighted that a RRBF sponsor agreed to take on her case, and she now receives a Red Rubber Ball Foundation scholarship. It means her fees for her three years of junior secondary school will be covered and she can attend school without interruption.
The flip side
The other side of education in Kenya involves a boy who we have been sponsoring at another secondary school. It is a good school, with a good reputation for boys progressing to university. They choose to charge the maximum permitted by the Ministry of Education, £54,554 Ksh (around £320).
These were the fees RRBF has paid for the full four years of the boy’s schooling. These were the amounts set out on the school fee letters we had been given.
But this school chose to go beyond this and charge extra ‘development fees’. Its not unreasonable for the school to charge additional costs, often voted through by the parent/teacher body, but these must be optional. Otherwise families and sponsors are agreeing to an open cheque!
In this case the extras were significant amounts – equivalent to more than another year’s schooling. For parents who could not afford the original school fees, these extras are impossible. Despite this the school chose to exclude the boy we have supported, for non-payment of these extras.
And they chose to exclude him at the start of his final term in his final year, just before he is due to sit his exams in November. He can only be readmitted if someone (us) pays his fee balance.
This is immoral. It is also illegal. A school has one job – to educate young people. It cannot do that by excluding them.
And it is not the first time it has happened. As a result, when we pay the school fees each year, we remind each school of the Ministry of Education directives. Statements from several Directors of Education make it clear that if school fees have been paid in full, then schools cannot exclude children for non-payment of ‘extras’. Despite this a small number of schools do so.
As I happened to be in Kenya, Deb and I decided to visit the Ministry of Education in Nairobi. A privilege of being a sponsor, a foreigner, and white, is that we were able to secure a meeting with a Deputy Director of Education, without an appointment and without under-going any security checks as we entered the building.
Interestingly when I explained the situation, the Deputy Director’s first words were, ‘that’s illegal’. I was struck that these were his exact words, not just mine.
So we made our formal complaint, and the Deputy Director phoned the County Director of Education, who in turn would contact the school.
I’ve heard nothing since.
I’m disappointed but sadly not surprised.
We paid the extras. It was not a decision we took lightly. It goes against my moral code. But equally there are times to be pragmatic. RRBF exists to give children in Kenya a secondary education. The alternative was to leave the boy at home, unable to sit his final exams after four years effort (and four years of paid school fees).
These two schools show two sides of schooling in Kenya. It’s the environment in which we operate. And perhaps it demonstrates why RRBF, and other organisations like us, are needed.
But we can choose which schools we are willing to support. And we will only be supporting one of these two schools in the future.