An assessment of the challenges facing participation of children in free primary education: The case of Mukuru Kayaba, Nairobi

Abstract

This research project report examines the challenges faced by children in Mukuru Kayaba informal settlement in accessing Free Primary Education. Primary data was collected from five purposively selected primary schools based in Mukuru Kayaba. Secondary data was collected from official documents within the Ministry of Education, Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the Women's Bureau and other previous reports. This research project looked at the current system of education as far as it affects children, with special emphasis on the participation indicators of access, retention and completion. It sought to address the following objectives; to determine the current enrolment of children in primary schools in Mukuru Kayaba, to establish available human and educational resources, instructional methodologies and opportunities for supporting education of slum children, and to determine psychosocial and school factors that hinder participation of slum children in primary schools. The study basically depended on inductive logic information where the observed data lead to information theories that explained the relationship between phenomena observed. Since independence in 1963, there have been numerous commissions and committees set up in Kenya to look at key issues in education and some of these parliamentary bills on Kenya's education system; nevertheless the review findings indicate that these documents and policies ignore crucial gaps in the provision of education for children. The research also finds that all the different programmes that provide education to children in Kenya are riddled with problems. Just to mention a few we find that, household based factors -poverty, socio-cultural factors, and gender issues; school based factors such as congestion and the pupil teacher ratio is too high and this compromises education standards, the school fees policy is also not clear on the obligations of the different stakeholders and leaves a lot of room for exploitation of parents and guardians, and there is lack of adequate infrastructure such as buildings and equipment. The most notable policy implication of the findings is that education in Kenya needs a complete overhaul, and not piece-meal reforms, viable and sustainable cost and financing mechanisms have to be instituted to stop drop-outs from the system, thus enhance completion rates.