I have been helping a little girl go to school. I am not here to gloat. Just sharing a few worrying trends in public schools. The first is the myriad fees for all sorts of things. I, for one, do not understand the whole notion of capitation. I just pay with a little trepidation that I am not being scammed.
Then there are the actual fees, exam assessment for lower grades, and my bugbear is ‘remedial’ fees (whatever that means). After trying to keep up, you are told the child has been sent home again for some other reason involving money.
What is shocking is that some of the fees are to be paid into a teacher’s private M-Pesa. This makes you wonder who owns these public schools? Should they not have official bank accounts for audit purposes?
Money aside, the worrying part is a child of six being sent back home before they have even set foot in class for myriad and weird fees. Then expensive uniforms must be purchased from select shops only.
I may be wrong, but I am getting a sense that the teachers in Kenya are inventing their own fee scheme that is running parallel to guidance from the Ministry of Education. There is corruption, and there is corruption, but the one that beleaguers schools in Kenya is heartbreaking. Sending a child back home when their education and life are only getting started at six is not only shocking but also unkind. Sending children back home for fees has implications for the child for life. They do not understand why their progress is halted. They are caught in an unfair system designed by adults in government and in teaching.
Kenya decries the rise in teenage pregnancies, but I suppose the government and teachers have not paused to ask what their role is in exacerbating the problem. A teenage girl sent back home is at risk of sexual exploitation. Schools should be the core shelter for most girls until they reach the age of majority to protect them from sexual predators that seem to roam the country.
I suppose schools, just like healthcare in Kenya and indeed Africa, are victims of looting and mismanagement. Education in primary and secondary schools is free in most countries; why not in Kenya? The failure to offer free education in primary and secondary schools is not due to lack of money but due to mismanagement and looting.
Policymakers who say there is no funding for free education and healthcare are living off the taxpayers by paying themselves huge salaries, besides partaking in corruption in education and healthcare.
The largest share of Kenya’s national revenue goes to fund the lifestyle of elected officials whose children attend expensive private schools and hospitals on taxpayers’ money. It is difficult to comprehend how a country that can pay its MPs higher than MPs from donor countries can justify such high salaries when primary school children cannot afford school fees.
Private aircraft that dot many African skylines paint a picture of a continent rich enough for its politicians to afford such vessels. The reality is that many politicians in Africa rely on private jets, whether hired or owned, because there are no good roads for them to use, especially in rural areas. Roads in Africa, like schools and hospitals, have not been developed, despite many countries getting funding for them.
The World Bank and IMF have been tirelessly funding African countries to develop key infrastructure such as roads, but there is little evidence of this in many countries. Kenya is no exception. Politicians in the country are notorious for using private aircraft to visit their constituencies or travel around the country.
Owning or hiring private aircraft is not cheap. As many politicians take to the skies to avoid bad roads, one is left wondering who is expected to build roads if not elected officials with the mandate to develop them alongside rails and a better public transport system. The million-dollar question is where the money to hire or buy private aircraft comes from if not looted funds meant for roads, schools and hospitals.
A child of six years unable to attend school because of a lack of fees is just another victim of mismanagement and corruption that has taken root in Africa. As politicians avoid the chaos they create on the ground by flying everywhere, they equally leave innocent victims with no crucial services such as schools and hospitals.
Africans silently celebrate when politicians crash in their private aircraft. They could be forgiven for seeming sadistic, but the real reason is bitterness. Watching someone contemptuously fly past the problems they created for you on the ground with the money they collected from you is a fair cause for bitterness.
There is no more justification for Kenya failing to fund free education when they throw money at the vanity of owning private aircraft on taxpayers’ money.
