CAUSES OF THE CHALLENGES FACING ORPHANS EDUCATION IN MANDERA COUNTY
- Home
- Our Challenges
CAUSES OF THE CHALLENGES FACING ORPHANS EDUCATION IN MANDERA COUNTY
Insecurity, pastoralist life style, socio-cultural challenges, poverty
Insecurity
As we are aware the issue of insecurity in the region has been a big challenge. 2nd April, 2015, tragedy in Garissa University College being the worst where 147 students were killed. This has resulted to many teachers from outside the region who were “subject experts” to withdraw. The KNUT has reported that 28 schools have been shut down and 800 teachers were displaced because of insecurity in Northern region. The remaining teachers and students fear. The future is somewhat still uncertain.
Pastoralists Lifestyle
As was noted, about 74% of the children eligible to go to primary schools don’t. In some locations such as Malka – Meri in Mandera County, the figure is over 85%. Besides insecurity, the other problem is that majority of the families are nomads moving with their livestock camels, cattle, goats and sheep. Pastoralists have normally multiple residences. The children look after their parent’s animals. This lifestyle therefore does not favour education system as we know it which is more of pro-sedentary population. Hence schools in the region have problems of under enrolment. There is just formed Kenya’s Council on Nomadic Education whose policies towards the education of the children of the pastoralists/nomadic communities is yet to become visible and concrete.
Poverty
Mass poverty among the population and households (85% households-cannot afford three meals per day and have less than 200 shillings income) results challenges of school fees, school uniforms, equipments, computer lab and school infrastructure, class rooms for schools and even lack of books, stationeries and school meals. The money allocated to public schools is rarely adequate. Very few schools have independent commercial source of income.
Better School Governance and role models
To have great school administration and role models is important for students. In many schools in Western Kenya, Nairobi and Nyanza, they have yearly schedules of “visits and motivational talks” of more than 60 per year. I was in two secondary schools in Mandera; there was no one who had paid them a visit in two years, even from the county leaderships. I read somewhere that, the Eaton High School, which is a prestigious school in the UK has over 200 motivational speakers per year including, ambassadors from the USA and Japan. School governance, leadership, supervision, quality control, PTAs and so on are bedrock pillars to educational prosperity. To students particularly, drug free environment, these are essential things.
Socio-cultural challenges
Generally, there is feeling that the community, the parents and by extension the children, do not attach “great value” to education. Thus the children do not “demand” to be taken to schools. Parents do not see “immediate results” by taking children to school. Parents appear not to associate positively education with increased social and human capital competitive advantage. The girl child in the process becomes the greatest loser. Further, the girl child bears the specific burden of FGM, which is more or less culture driven and which impacts negatively on the education of girls. When there were teachers strikes in the country, most of the secondary schools in other parts of the country somehow continued with the students, and few teachers remaining in the schools, and students “teaching one another”.