As a follow up to the Dakar Declaration of 2000, many countries embarked on the implementation process towards achievement of EFA goals by 2015. On its part Kenya, held several consultative forums out of which a National Plan of Action was developed. To strengthen this, the Government implemented Free Primary Education in 2003 towards achievement of UPE which brought on board 1.5 million additional children with new challenges, including access, equity, relevance and quality, transition and resources.
To address these, a National Conference on Education and Training was convened in 2003 in order to mobilize all the stakeholders so as to map out a new strategy for the provision of education in the 21st century. The Conference recommendations resulted in the development of Sessional Paper No. I on Education, Training and Research, of 2005, which was approved by both the Government and Parliament.

To operationalize the Sessional Paper, the Government developed a reform strategy-the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP) 2005-2010 outlining the strategies and prioritized areas for funding. KESSP is a mechanism through which Government and Development Partners have agreed to fund the programme through negotiated partnerships principles. In this process the Government has demonstrated its commitment and owner-ship to EFA by its decision to fund 95% of the programme cost. These arrangements are expected to enhance the use of country systems and avoid duplication for improved efficiency and effectiveness.

The KESSP targets the un-reached and hard-to-reach children such as girls, special needs, and children living in slums, arid and semi-arid areas and pockets of poverty. Five years after Dakar, Kenya has shown significant progress towards EFA goals.

At the Early Childhood Education (ECD) level, we have strengthened the capacity of our National and local Centres for Early Childhood Education, mobilized community and parents’ support and trained supervisors to offer professional support to ECD teachers. These strategies have led to a 44% trained teaching force and improved GER from 32% in 2002 to 57% in 2005.

At primary level, implementation of Free Primary Education Policy in January 2003, improved GER from 85.9% in 2002 to 104%. The Net Enrolment Rate (NER) rose from 79% to 84%. Primary School Completion Rate (PCR) is about 57%.

Within the KESSP reform and in order to guarantee sustained inclusion of the marginalized groups, the Government has increased support to low cost boarding schools in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), capitation grants for special needs education and mainstreamed Non formal Education (NFE). Other impacting measures include school health and nutrition, re-entry policy, especially for girls, and infrastructural support. In addition we have enhanced the capacity of school managers, and mainstreamed HIV/AIDS through formulation of a policy into the regular school curriculum.

Further efforts include affirmative action for the girl child in provision of funds for water, sanitation facilities including sanitary towels, following research indication that lack of these facilities for girls had contributed to their lower participation.

After FPE, enrolments at the secondary level increased from 22% in 2002 to 29% in 2005. In addition, a completion rate of 90% has been realized. Special efforts to enhance the sub-sector include a decentralized bursary fund scheme for needy students and investments in laboratory facilities; infrastructure rehabilitation and expansion and curriculum rationalisation. Other notable achievements have included a fully trained teaching force with regular inservicing especially in mathematics and science based subjects.

FPE and subsequent in-crease in enrolment improved the gender parity to 49% for girls to 51% for boys at primary. At secondary level this stands at 46% to 54% for girls and boys, respectively. There are still significant regional and gender disparities at both levels, which are being addressed by affirmative actions highlighted. At the post-secondary level gender disparities are manifested at both faculty level and in students’ enrolments.

Key to these efforts has been our concern that quantitative growth should not compromise quality; hence Government commitment of 7% of GDP and 27% of the budget to education. These funds have enhanced provision of teaching/learning materials; a curriculum reform; rehabilitation and expansion of infrastructure and capacity building especially for quality assurance officers and education managers. Mechanisms for continuous monitoring and evaluation have been put in place to ensure transparency, accountability, effective utilisation of resources and maintenance of standards.

Technical Education is critical for providing avenues for absorbing the increasing number of primary and secondary school leavers. The Government is in the process of developing the National Skills Training Strategy that will guide the necessary reforms required to move the Technical Vocational Entrepreneurship and Training (TIVET) sector forward.

© ESARO/PIROZZI/UNICEF

Notwithstanding these achievements, Kenya and other developing countries still face a number of challenges in the sector. These include low enrolments, especially in urban slums, arid and semi-arid districts and pockets of poverty. Universal adult literacy has not been achieved in a number of countries. Other challenges include shortage of trained teachers, obsolete equipment and inadequate infrastructure. In addition, given the importance of Information Communication Technology (ICT), there is need for massive investment of ICT infrastructure at all levels. These problems are exacerbated by the high levels of poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

To consolidate the gains so far made by African and other developing countries and to ensure the achievement of MDG and EFA goals, the international community need to honour their commitments made since Dakar (2000), Monterrey (2002), Paris Declaration and recently the G8 Summit (2005). In particular there is need to honour the recently announced global debt relief with the understanding that the funds so saved will be invested in education, health and peace, among others. It is important for the international communities to redouble efforts in support of ongoing reforms and mobilization of additional resources to enhance capacity building. It is also important to provide resources for scaling up ongoing successful initiatives especially for girl child education such as the USA Presidents Girls Scholarship Program and Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) Scholarships.

The six Dakar goals
(adopted by the World Education Forum,
Dakar, Senegal, 26-28 April 2000)

“We hereby collectively commit ourselves to the attainment of the following goals:
• Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children;
• Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality;
• Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes;
• Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing Education For All adults;
• Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality;
• Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.”

Background
In pursuance of the Governments’ commitment to the Millennium Development and Education For All (EFA) Goals, Free Primary Education was launched in the year 2003 from Standard 1-8. The implementation of Free Primary Education has resulted in 1.5 Million additional pupils being enrolled in public primary schools. The increased enrolment has overstretched facilities; significantly raised teacher pupil ratio’s in some places and occasioned inadequate learning teaching resources as serious challenges affecting the quality of education. This situation was compounded by the long rains of March/April 2004, which destroyed facilities in many schools. Consequently learning in many of the concerned schools was interrupted. The most affected areas were Western, Rift Valley and Nyanza provinces. In this respect the Government provided funds to some of the schools. However, not all schools were assisted.

In order to assist the schools rehabilitated the facilities affected by the heavy rains, Kenya National Commission for UNESCO requested UNESCO to provide emergency financial assistance. In response to the request UNESCO provided assistance amounting to Ksh. 1.8 Million.

Objectives
The objectives of the emergency funds were to assist schools to rehabilitate key facilities for teaching and learning to resume.

Committee and Criteria for Allocation
The Kenya National Commission for UNESCO set up a committee to consider requests from the affected schools and to develop criteria for allocation of the available funds.

Given that different schools have different priorities and that the amount of money available was minimal, the committee decided on the four point criteria for disbursement of the funds. These were:
• That the available funds be used to assist schools which were affected by floods, landslides, collapsing walls, blown off roofs and damaged toilets.
• The money be apportioned equally to the identified needy schools.
• The schools to be assisted were the ones applied to the Ministry and Kenya National Commission for assistance.
• District Education Office certified that the schools had not received similar assistance.

Subsequently a total of 28 schools in 17 districts across the country benefited from the funding.