Kenyan Children Lose 3 Years Of Quality Learning

Kenyan children go to school for 11 years but lose about three years of learning and end up accounting for eight years of quality learning according to the World Bank.

The bank found out that a good number of Kenyan learners aged 10 years, were not able to read and understand, and more than 40 percent of those at the post-secondary level (19-20 years of age) were rated below the basic literacy level.

Despite going to school for many years, Kenyan children lack quality education and can only reach 52 percent of their potential.

“There is a difference between schooling and learning. Kenyan children may go to school for 11 years but when those learning years are adjusted to determine quality, it comes back to 7.8 years,” said World Bank’s senior education specialist Huma Waheed at their offices in Nairobi.

Ms. Waheed said that there is a crisis the world over in learning, but the most affected are developing countries, where more investment needs to be pumped towards learning rather than schooling, for the world to realize positive outcomes.

The World Bank came to the conclusion if the quality of learning after conducting a survey in seven Sub Saharan countries, where it was also discovered that in 10 fourth grade teachers, at least three had no mastery of language used to teach.

Kenya was however recognized as one of the developing countries showing a lot of progress in education through technology-enabled teacher coaching, teacher guides and the issuing of one textbook per child.

Speaking during the International Day for Poverty Eradication on October 17th under the theme ‘Recognition and Eradication of Learning Poverty by 2030’, Ms. Waheed said that there was need to assess all students’ learning capacity throughout the year to ensure that they are well equipped to compete in the global environment.

World Bank has, therefore, announced a new learning target that aims at eradicating learning poverty (based on 10-year-olds who cannot read and understand simple stories survey) by 2030.

The bank’s target is aimed at encouraging the political class to be committed to investing in people, so as to boost human capital development efforts.

World Bank’s Human Capital Index (HCI) will track a country’s progress in health, education, and survival so that countries are able to establish how much is lost because of the human capital gap and how fast they can turn their losses into gain.

Kenya was ranked at the 94th position in 2018’s Human Capital Index, scoring 0.52, being the second African country after Mauritius.

“Education is one of our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and if nothing is done, that specific target is at risk,” noted the World Bank.