East Africa: Poor education haunts the region
By Kizito Makoye, Dar es Salaam – Middle-class pupils in Kenya are likely to better learn basic numeracy and literacy skills in school than rich pupils in Uganda or Tanzania-a new study says.
Pupils of St Eelizabeth Academy in Nairobi, Kenya
The major study conducted by Uwezo,the East Africa’s education think tank however says, pupils from poor families in Kenya, are most likely to be worse educated than similar pupils in Uganda or Tanzania.
Conducted in June, 2011, the survey portrays a disturbing picture of alarmingly low quality primary education in the region.
For instance, the findings show that 31 percent of pupils from poor families in Kenya passed a Class 3 numeracy test as compared to 28 percent of children from rich Ugandan households.
According to the study, Kenyan pupils came out on top in a standard test administered to measure basic ability to read letters, words, a sentence and finally a paragraph in a text.
The tests also examined simple ability to compute numbers as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
A total of 68,945 children were interviewed from Kenya, 34,752 from Uganda and 42,033 from Tanzania, all aged between six and 16 years.
According to the findings, in all three countries, pupils performed poorly compared to the established curriculum levels.
-Even on a test where children in Tanzania ought to have an advantage over those in Kenya, they performed worse, the survey findings say.
The findings show about 19 percent of Kenyan children from poor households passed the English test, as compared to 16 percent of children from the well off households in Tanzania who passed the test.
According to the findings, massive enrolment of children across the region does not correspond to education quality; with majority of children who complete primary school never learn basic skills.
Uwezo researcher, Sara Ruto, says,-even though Kenya is ahead, as a whole the region is doing quite badly. It’s like a house with a hopelessly weak foundation.
The Uwezo study found the majority of primary school leavers across the region can barely handle numeracy and literacy tests conducted in Class 2.
Critics say the absence of a standardised test that measures skills in reading, writing and basis critical thinking in the lower education levels, makes it difficult for East Africa governments to independently judge the quality of education generated by their investment.
Education takes up more than five per cent of the entire budgets in the East African countries. Statistics show, Kenya’s budget for education stood at $1.72 billion — 13 per cent of the total budget — up from last year’s allocation of $1.63 billion.
Pupils attending private schools across the region -normally a preserve of the rich performed better on the Uwezo tests than those attending public schools.
In Kenya, 60 per cent of children in Class 3 private schools passed the English and numeracy tests, twice as good as the performance in public schools, and a trend that cuts across the other countries.
Dropout rates were higher for children from poor and very poor households. Among those who dropped out of school, 61 per cent were from poor or very poor households in Kenya, compared with 50 per cent and 41 per cent, respectively, in Uganda and Tanzania.
Among the middle class, only 18 per cent of children in Kenya dropped out of school. In Tanzania, more wealthy children (24 per cent) dropped out of school compared with those from poor backgrounds (23 per cent). Uganda’s dropout rates are almost equally distributed across poor and wealthy households.
Analysts say the half-baked school leavers are filtering into other levels of learning, like secondary schools and universities, and impacting on the quality of graduates entering the East Africa job market. This could hurt the bloc’s ability to produce skills needed to grow its economies.
Uwezo researchers say poor performance in primary education is attributed to parents’ education level.
-We found that Kenyan parents are more likely to be higher educated than their Ugandan or Tanzanian counterparts, regardless of income. It could be that these parents are more involved in their children’s education.”
The former East African Community’s Secretary General Juma Mwapachu said more effort is needed to strengthen the quality of education in the region as most schools lacked teaching facilities and qualified teachers.
The study assessed tens of thousands of children in 135 districts across East Africa in a home environment. English, Kiswahili and numeracy tests were designed in accordance with national curricula, to determine whether the pupils had mastered the Standard 2 level of their national education curriculum.
Kizito Makoye is a journalist based in Tanzania
