Friday, March 02, 2007

Why Kenya’s High School Education System Is Biased

Why is it that the same 10 or so ‘Ivy League’ schools always top the KCSE examinations list? Are Kenya’s youth condemned to mediocrity and the lack of a quality tertiary education should they not get a place in these ‘Ivy League’ high schools? This blog has beef with Kenya’s high school education system. Here’s why: This blog strongly believes that all schools classified as ‘Government’ should offer their students the same quality of education – unless of course, the government feels that some of its citizens deserve better treatment than others.
Even in countries where ‘Ivy League’ schools truly exist, they are usually private institutions, and not government owned. Reason being that private school owners can fork out tones of cash to recruit the very best teachers and buy top notch learning facilities. For the majority of the denizens who can’t afford to attend these high cost Ivy League schools, they are left with no alternative but to join government funded schools. Why then, should the government further discriminate on the children of its tax payers by creating some schools that are equipped with better learning facilities than others? Shouldn’t all government schools have the same learning facilities? Shouldn’t every teenie in Kenya have an equal opportunity to get to a university or college education? The reason school fees and other related costs at the so called National Schools are so high is because there is no equitable distribution of educational facilities. It simply does not make economic sense for a student to travel all the way from Mombasa to Thika to study in an ivy league National School. If there was no discrimination in the equitable distribution of high school facilities, there would be no need for this student to endure the torture of traveling 500 kilometres to get a quality education – she would get that education in Mombasa.
As we once again congratulate Starehe Boys Centre for topping the KCSE exams, we should ask ourselves one question; if all the high schools had, more or less, similar educational facilities, and the criteria for recruiting high school students was based on geographical proximity rather than intellectual hierarchy, would the same schools keep topping the national high school examinations? The answer is most probably, no. At the end of the 4 years, shouldn’t your entry into a tertiary level institution be dictated by your intellectual input and not the school you attend? What say you?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

same top 10 skulz coz they do wak hard 4 it. izo zingine zinalala 2. bt were on earth is MAMA NGINA GIRLS? how did the make no 9 countrywide. or shud they tell us somethin we don no? Coasto?

Anonymous said...

hehehe This blog - is very bright it has an opinion. who is this blog?

The Insyder Blogz said...

This blog is affiliated to The Insyder magazine, Kenya's leading entertainment and teen publication.