Widening Participation, Kenyan style

AimHigher was a major initiative to get 50% of UK youth into higher education. In particular it targeted those who'd be the first generation in university in their family, whether Bangladeshi young people from Tower Hamlets, white working class men, or those from the lowest socio economic groups still least likely to consider university education.  We ran summer schools to show the fun and interactive side of university, sent staff to our nearby mosques to calm the fears of elders, and thence their parents, so Bangladeshi girls might be allowed to take up their places, supported first year students to return to their sink-school comprehensives to run workshops to encourage younger students.  It was an inspiring programme, even just as a staff member. It changed futures.

Widening participation in education in Kenya is a whole new ballgame.  The groundbreaking introduction of Free Primary Education (FPE) in 2003 opened basic education to those who, previously had been unable to pay the school fees.  Children who'd been forced to drop out, re-enrolled.  Children who'd been forced to drop out, re-enrolled, undaunted by the fact that they were now adults.  There are 1.3 million more people (some 15% more) in primary education today than in 2004.

On a trip to the National Museum recently I watched a Kenyan school group where some lads, in late adolescence, towered over their tiny preteen classmates.  A 40 year old mother of two, who had been working as a hawker, returned to primary school two years ago, and has just been allocated a place at a girls high school (see picture).  But now this massive influx have reached KCPE, the primary school leaving exam, on which fiercely competitive places for the four years of high school are allocated.

There are almost 750,000 students who took KCPE in 2010.  They are competing for 4517 places at the state funded top performing secondary schools (the 'national' schools).   In the past, though,pupils at private schools are only 15% of all those taking the exam, they've taken 30% of the 4000 places at the elite state schools. 

Even where pupils from state schools have been allocated a place at an Alliance High School or Moi Girls, in practice, the fees (75,000 KSh/term) are far, far, beyond what most families can afford. The government does help out, - it offers 10,000 a term towards the fees, - but still a long, long way short.  So the pupil has to give up their place and opt for a (lesser-ranked) cheaper provincial or local school closer to home.  Several of my students have spoken of their pride, of the pride of their whole village, when the letter came inviting them to attend a national school.  One lad then wrote of his father delivering him on the first day of term, not at the national school he'd dreamed of for years, but without warning at the humble district school which the family could afford. Of him spending the first day at the new school in floods of tears of distress and disappointment.

So this year the government is adopting positive discrimination at selection to seek to redress the balance for state school pupils.  The comparisons are horrific. Where primary pupils in the very best private schools might be in classes of 1:20 pupils, in the state schools a teacher would frequently have a class of 100 primary pupils.  The government is short of 60,000 teachers.  A state school is allocated around 1000 KSh, around £8, per head, per year, for all resources for each pupil.  Hard to compete on equal terms in an exam where students are then ranked nationally, from number 1 at primary level, presumably to number 749,999.  Again, my students proudly quote, five years on, pride still untarnished, their grade at KCPE - 'I got 417/500 at KCPE, I was ranked third in Nyanza Province'.  It matters here, where education is literally the way out of the slum.

So the government is adopting different benchmarks in selecting students from different modes of schooling. In 2011, in a major reversal, only 1224 candidates from private schools will join national schools, while 3293 will come from state schools who have taken most of the children under FPE.  You can imagine the outrage. The letters are about to go out. Pupils report to school on 30 January.  Parents are waiting with bated breath.

Children who've been in classes of a hundred are maybe going to be told that they are among some of the best in the country. Tragic if they can't progress to take up their place, but a source of lifelong pride nonetheless.

And when people in the UK grumble why is money being spent on aid, when the NHS, UK education, councils and social services are being pared to the bone, one of my answers - despite the education fraud here - is the impact of Free Primary Education (which is mainly being funded by the Kenyan government anyhow).  Of the seismic shift for young people, and lifelong learners.  Official statistics show that each year around 200,000 young people still take KCPE and just disappear off the books, into the countryside, as one of my students said sadly, 'To a future of digging drainage ditches and fishing.' But in eight years the numbers going on to high school have increased from 47% to 72% this year.  Sadly, many won't be able to afford to go to their first choice school for which they have won places, - but nonetheless what an achievement to trumpet.  Its a New Deal for our generation to be proud of.  And for each individual, a future with greater hope in a country without safety nets.