Unconditional readmission: The hollow promise Kenya made to teen mothers

Imagine this scenario - the bell rings. School latrines become sanctuaries for teenage mothers who slip away to express milk from painful breasts while classmates play. When they return home, these girls don't join study groups – they juggle books in one hand and babies in the other, fighting sleep after nights interrupted by infant cries. They navigate a world designed to exclude them, yet they persist.

This is not a scene from a bygone era. This is Kenya today, 30 years after we promised to do better.

In 1994, Kenya introduced the School Re-entry Policy for Girls, requiring schools to unconditionally readmit teen mothers. This was revolutionary on paper – an acknowledgment that motherhood should not end a girl's education. Three decades later, the numbers tell a different story: while teen pregnancy rates have declined to 19.9 per cent, according to the 2024 Economic Survey, we're still failing these girls spectacularly. Of the estimated 13,000 girls who drop out annually due to pregnancy, barely 1,200 ever return to classrooms.

Let that sink in. Ninety per cent of teen mothers never complete their education.

Read: School heads urge ministry to review policy on exams to expectant candidates

As we investigate why this policy languishes in implementation, I find a tapestry of failures woven with threads of indifference. Many schools don't have copies of the policy. No standardised monitoring system exists. When head teachers interpret "being understanding" toward teen mothers, some read it as reluctant tolerance, others as active discouragement.

The policy promised unconditional readmission but provided no childcare, no counselling for traumatised young mothers, no mechanisms to help them catch up on missed schoolwork. These girls—children themselves—are thrust into motherhood through circumstances often beyond their control, then expected to function in school as though nothing had changed, without support systems that acknowledge their new reality.

What's particularly galling is how we treat teen pregnancy as solely the girl's burden. While young mothers drop out to give birth and provide care, teenage fathers remain in school, reinforcing gender roles that disproportionately punish women. Our society's selective outrage exposes a deeper hypocrisy.

Trauma and motherhood

This hypocrisy becomes more apparent when I consider a case reported this week – a man convicted of defilement and sentenced to life imprisonment, now freed through presidential pardon, reunited with family amid celebrations of his redemption. Society welcomes him back with pomp and colour. Meanwhile, the girl he violated likely abandoned her education, her potential buried under the weight of trauma and motherhood.

This stark contrast reveals our profoundly disturbing societal values. We celebrate the rehabilitation of defilers while abandoning their victims. We express brief shock at defilement statistics, then shrug collectively when pregnant girls are expelled from homes and schools. When authorities are approached about defilement cases – as happened with the case I reported on last week where a father defiled his daughters – they respond with dismissiveness that borders on complicity.

I've heard the argument that supporting teen mothers somehow "encourages" more pregnancies – as if education is a reward for pregnancy rather than a fundamental right. Research consistently shows that educated girls have fewer children, not more. Denying education doesn't prevent pregnancy; it perpetuates cycles of poverty and dependency. The evidence is clear: countries with robust support systems for teen mothers have lower, not higher, rates of adolescent pregnancy. Abandoning these girls doesn't protect future generations – it virtually guarantees their vulnerability.

We live in a country where police officers hang up on reporters inquiring about defilement cases. Where neighbours advise mothers to "hear the defiler's side." Where parents cast out pregnant daughters while protecting the very perpetrators who violated them. Our collective moral compass isn't just broken – it's been deliberately smashed.

Against this backdrop, our tepid implementation of the re-entry policy feels like another betrayal. We're failing these girls not from lack of knowledge about what works, but from lack of will to make it work. Comparative research shows that successful re-entry programs require holistic support: financial assistance, childcare facilities, counselling services, academic catch-up programs, and community sensitization to combat stigma.

Read: Lusaka under fire over push to eject pregnant teens from school

What if we treated the education of teen mothers as the national emergency it is? What if we allocated resources for school-based day-care facilities? What if we created specialised counselling programs addressing the trauma many of these young mothers go through – often through defilement? What if we pursued defilement cases with the same vigour with which we punish the resulting pregnancies?

The decline in teen pregnancy rates offers a glimmer of hope. But this progress feels hollow when knowing that those who become pregnant face almost insurmountable barriers to continuing their education.

Every morning, I see girls in school uniforms walking to school. I wonder how many will disappear from those classrooms, pushed out by a pregnancy and abandoned by a system that promised to protect them. I wonder how many perpetrators walk free while their victims bear both the blame and the consequences. I wonder how many dreams are deferred, how much potential is wasted, how many cycles of poverty are perpetuated because we couldn't be bothered to implement a policy we committed to 30 years ago.

The bell rings. For most students, it signals a break from learning. For teen mothers, it marks another impossible choice in a series of impossible choices. Thirty years after our promise, it's time we answered that bell with the urgency and commitment these girls deserve.

[email protected]