ENVISIONING HIGHER EDUCATION FOR EDUCATION FOR ALL LOCALLY

THE PERSPECTIVE FROM PRIMARY EDUCATION ON LOCAL PRIORITIES IN EFA

Presented by Charles Kado for KEPSHA

• Goals 1 and 6 provide guidance on what types of learning are important at different age levels. EFA Goal 1 is aimed at “expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.”

• The Dakar Framework for Action (2000), further states that such programmes should focus on all a child’s needs including health, nutrition and hygiene, cognitive and social development. This broad vision of education and holistic approach to sector development was fully embraced by Kenya as a critical vehicle for realizing Vision 2030.

Population Growth

• The number of children in schools have been growing just as the Kenyan population has been increasing.

• The freezing of teacher employment in the 1990s has never been lifted.

• This in essence means and it can be verified from the school records that the teacher population has been decreasing in most schools as the number of children increase.

• EFA Goal 6 is “Improving every aspect of quality of education and ensuring their excellence so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.”

Progress Noted • Strong political will and commitment as shown in the campaigns• Sustained allocation of the state budget to the primary education

sector especially since 2003.• Development and implementation of major policies and

interventions enabling the programmes growth.• Enforcing the Free Primary Education and enacting it in the

constitution.• Rolling out of child friendly school initiative to improve the

teaching learning environment.• Provision of mid day meals for children especially from schools in

the disadvantaged zones.• Provision of learning materials under the FPE programme

Challenges• Regional disparities in access, equity, quality and retention.• Inadequate financing of education programmes.• Lack of adequate teaching force.• Inadequate resources for ensuring effective management, implementation and

service provision of FPE programme.• Inadequate infrastructure ( furniture, sanitation, classrooms)• Inappropriate learning environment including special needs learning.• Lack of parental involvement.• HIV/AIDS, substance abuse and poverty.• Overcrowded classes.• Ineffective curricula implementation resulting into low mastery of literacy and

numeracy skills.• Inadequate ICT capacity and infrastructure for the implementation of e-learning.• Low quality of education for learners with special needs.

Role of Higher Education

• Contribute to the development and improvement of education at all levels including the training of teachers.

• Higher education should reinforce its role of service to the society, especially in activities aimed at eliminating poverty, values and illiteracy.

• Higher education is at the top of the education pyramid and determines to a large extent the state of education system of the country especially its quality.

HE Role cont’d

• Institutions of higher education can not isolate themselves from surrounding social problems and therefore they just have to be linked to the primary education sector without pointing fingers as the usual norm of problem resolution.

• This is indeed how we in the primary sector feel.

THANK YOU

• Over twelve years have passed since the international community adopted the six EFA Goals at the World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal in 2000. Kenya adopted the FPE in 2003 and it has since been entrenched into the constitution 2010. There is still KCPE that is used as criteria for form 1 selection. The challenges appear more than the gains made and although this is a noble idea I believe we need to address the challenges in the primary sector if HE has to play its role and a partner in EFA.