Funding of public education in Kenya is skewed in favour of children from rich families, a new report by the United Nations Children Fund shows.
Children from the poorest households benefit the least from national public education funding, it says.
It shows children from the poorest 20 per cent of the population benefit from only 14 per cent of the education spending.
Meanwhile, kids from the richest 20 per cent of families hog a quarter of the spending on education in Kenya.
The results are clear in the national examinations, such as the recently released KCSE, where the majority of D+ and below came from small schools in remote areas and slums.
“We are failing children. Too many education systems around the world are investing the least in those children who need it the most,” Unicef executive director Catherine Russell said in a statement.
“Investing in the education of the poorest children is the most cost-effective way to ensure the future for children, communities and countries. True progress can only come when we invest in every child, everywhere.”
The report indicates that just a one percentage point increase in the allocation of public education resources to the poorest 20 per cent may pull thousands of primary school-aged children out of learning poverty.
It examines data on government spending across pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary education from 102 countries, including Kenya, using household surveys such as the Demographic and Health Survey.
Countries in Africa suffer the most from inequitable education financing.
“In one out of every 10 countries, learners from the richest 20 per cent of households receive four or more times the amount of public education spending compared to those from the poorest households,” the report, titled Transforming Education with Equitable Financing shows.
It shows poor children are disadvantaged right from the Early Childhood Education (ECDE) level.
Children who face barriers to learning and schooling early in life face increasing challenges as they progress through their education, Unicef said.
Many of them drop out of school sooner, compared to children from rich families.
“More young children should also be given access to pre-primary education, so they are ready to gain foundational skills in primary school,” the report adds.
Poor kids are also more likely to live in remote and rural areas that are generally underserved and on the wrong side of the digital divide.
They are also less represented in higher levels of education, which receive much higher public education spending per capita.
“More poor children and youth should be given the chance to study in higher levels of education so that in the long term, as future parents or educators, they can help pull the next generation out of (learning) poverty,” the report shows.
The gap is smaller in high-income countries, with the richest usually benefitting from 1.1 to 1.6 times as much public education spending as the poorest.
According to the report, a key step to addressing the learning crisis is for governments to provide equitable financing and prioritise public education resources, including increasingly focusing on foundational learning.
This entails securing public funding for pre-primary and primary education for all and targeting the poor and marginalised at higher levels of education.
A total of 489,081 of students who sat the 2022 KCSE exam scored a mean grade of D+ and below.
This is more than half the total number who did the exam.
Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu on Friday said a total of 881,416 students were invigilated last year.
While releasing the results, the CS said male students performed better than female students.
“I hope going forward, the female students will improve,” he said.
Some 135,021 students scored grade D+, with 70,238 being female and 64,783 male students.
In the data, students who scored D- were 167,758, equating to 18.99 per cent.
