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Stop sending learners home, fix funding
Students sent home for school fees.
Schools are barely in their third week since reopening, yet across the country learners are already being sent home over unpaid school fees.
This practice is not just unfortunate; it is reckless and cruel. It punishes children for economic hardships they neither caused nor can control, and it exposes how disconnected parts of our education system are from the lived reality of Kenyan families.
Kenya is grappling with a harsh economy. Food prices are high, rent is unforgiving, jobs are scarce and taxes keep increasing. Parents are choosing between putting food on the table and paying school fees. When school heads send learners home at this moment, they are not enforcing discipline—they are deepening inequality and sabotaging the very purpose of education.
Sending pupils home disrupts learning, humiliates children, and increases dropout rates, especially in public and low-cost schools meant to protect the vulnerable.
The biggest lie we keep telling ourselves is that education is a right, yet our actions scream otherwise. What kind of “right” is conditional on instant cash in a struggling economy?
School administrators will argue that schools must run and bills must be paid. That excuse is tired and lazy. The solution cannot always be to throw children out. Flexible payment plans, structured engagement with parents, and pressure on relevant authorities for timely capitation are smarter, more humane options.
The government, too, cannot escape blame. Delayed capitation, poor planning and endless policy statements without action have left schools desperate.
What is happening now is not just an education issue; it is a social crisis in the making. Idle children roaming villages and estates because they were chased from school are exposed to abuse, crime and despair. We will pay for this negligence later, one way or another.
It is time to stop pretending this is normal. School heads must rethink punitive fee policies, and the government must urgently stabilise school financing. Most importantly, children must be kept in class.
Any system that treats education as a privilege for those who can pay on demand is broken—and it must be fixed now.
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Joseph Katiku Kioko, Nairobi
