Feature: Kenyan slum parents struggle to get their children quality education

Kenyan poor parents are digging deeper into their pockets to educate their children despite the government offering free education in public schools.

The parents, majority of them in informal settlements in the capital Nairobi and other towns, pay monthly charges of between 3 and 6 U.S. dollars as fees for their children in low-cost private schools.

Kenyan government spends annually about 5 dollars on every child under the free primary education, a program that was started 12 years ago. There are close to 10 million pupils in primary schools across the East African nation.

Similarly, the government spends about 12 dollars every year on each student in secondary schools under a subsidized system.

While parents with students at the secondary level pay for boarding fees and other charges in the subsidized arrangement, those at primary level don't pay any fees. They only buy school uniform and shoes and send their children to school as books and pens are also given there for free.

However, parents in the country's slums are not benefiting from the arrangement, a reason why several low-cost private primary schools have come up in the informal settlements.

The harsh milieu in the informal settlement has denied their children the right to free primary education. Chief among the things that are making the poor parents pay for their children's education is insecurity.

"Most public schools are located far, thus to access them, children have to walk for longer distances and navigate through their shanties to reach them. This is not safe due to the high crime rate that is why parents opt to bring their children to us," said Elizabeth Kimani, the headmistress of Ebenezer School.

The low-cost private school is located in Mathare, second largest slum in Nairobi, and serves over 100 pupils from Baby Class to Class Six.

"We charge the students 3 dollars every month, thus, in a term they part with about 10 dollars. Parents bring their children to us because we are the only learning facility close to them, the nearest public school is far," she said.

The school has five teachers, about all of them untrained, and until recently, it was made of iron-sheet structures.

"We pay the teachers from the money parents give us every month, but not even all of them honour their obligations because of poverty," she said.

The school runs a feeding program, where they offer the students breakfast and lunch. The sponsored program is one of the attractions that make parents take their children to the school.

"When I take my two children to the school, I know they will get the two meals and the teachers will take care of them; that does not happen in public schools due to huge number of pupils," Frida Anjeche, a parent in Mathare, said on Thursday.

Parents taking their children to the low-cost schools are also seeking quality education, according to David Matinde, the headmaster of Changrong Light Centre, another low-cost school in Mathare.

"We are one of the biggest private schools around and parents are bringing their children here because they want quality education, besides the institution being near their homes," he said.

He said the private schools play a crucial role in the slums as they have filled a gap that existed, which denied pupils access to education.

A research done by African Population and Health Research Centre,a pan-African research institution, early this year in six cities across Kenya, showed that parents (47 percent) in the informal settlements take their children to the low-cost private schools in search of quality education. The research also noted that in the schools, the student-book ratio and teacher-student ratio are higher than in public schools.

However, the research raised questions on quality of education in the schools due to lack of checks by the authority and most of those teaching there are untrained. Endit