World Bank Warns Of A Crisis In Kenya’s Education System

Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 03:18 pm

Children going through the Kenyan education system are losing an estimated three years of learning, the World Bank has said.

“What this means is that a Kenyan child can expect to go to school for 11 years out of which they will only do learning worth eight years,” said the bank’s senior education specialist Huma Waheed at their offices in Nairobi.

“When years of schooling are adjusted for quality of learning, this is only equivalent to 7.8 years, a learning gap of 2.9 years. This means Kenyan school-going children are having a learning loss of close to three years. Going to school doesn’t mean that children are learning and this is mainly because of the quality of education,” she added.

Despite completion of secondary education, more than 40 per cent of 19- and 20-year-olds score below the basic literacy level.

Due to this, she added, children who have gone through the education system in Kenya can only reach 52 per cent of their potential.

But even with these seemingly dreadful news, Kenya was recognised as one of the few developing countries showing accelerated progress for its accomplishment through technology-enabled teacher coaching, teacher guides, and the delivery of one textbook per child (in both English and Kiswahili).