Kenya fails to maintain girls in school despite a good start in primary level

Kenya has lost momentum in its pursuit for a level playing field for school girls and boys, a global gender gap report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows.

In over a decade, few of the key education attainment indicators changed significantly enough as to meaningfully contribute to bridging the gap between girls and boys, says the report.

Kenya registered a dismal improvement of 0.01 from 0.92 between 2006 and 2017. This slumber saw the country’s global ranking drop sharply from 88 to 120 within that period.

The report captures the intensity of gender-based disparities and tracks their progress over time, with the mark being gauged between 0.00 and 1.00. The score 1.00 represents gender parity, and the closer a score is to 1, the narrower the gender gap. Scores that surpass 1.00 represent disparities tilted in favour of girls.

Mixed results

Kenya however boasts a near-parity score in primary school enrolment of 1.04, the best score globally, attained by 65 nations. This means that girls and boys have an almost-equal opportunity to acquire primary education, a result that could be attributed to the free primary school education launched in 2003.

In 2017, the primary school enrolment for boys stood at 52 percent while that for girls was 48 percent, according to the Economic Survey 2018.

The gains in gender parity realised in the early years of education are however lost along the way. In 2017, Kenya posted a score of 0.9 in gender parity in secondary school enrolment, according to the report. This placed it at position 123 globally and 19 in sub-Saharan Africa. This shows that in as much as girls’ chances of beginning the quest for education are almost as high as that of boys, they lag behind in progression and completion. Studies have shown that a good number of challenges faced by girls in their school life creep up just before teenage and persist.

Some of the factors that account for girls’ poor performance in the long run include long distance to school, insecurity, religion, lack of sanitary facilities, parental illiteracy and neglect, strained communication between parents and their daughters, and broken families. This is according to a study by ActionAid conducted in eight counties – Baringo, West Pokot, Migori, Garissa, Kajiado, Embu, Taita Taveta and Isiolo.

Violence

The study also reported that girls from homes where violence on mother and daughter is rampant had their education disrupted, as they fled home for safety. This was more prominent in parts of Baringo, Taita Taveta and Embu counties.
''Our parents are sometimes too hostile and most of the time there is no freedom of speech, association or movement hence we cannot share our grievances with them. We then elope with boys and men who can listen to our problems,'' said a participant at a Focus Group Discussion organised by ActionAid in Baringo.

About 45 percent of women have experienced physical violence since age 15, with about a fifth experiencing it often or occasionally, according to the Kenya Demographics Health Survey 2014.

''Out of every five schoolgirls, about two are affected by domestic violence directed at their mothers,'' says Ms Terry Otieno, the National Coordinator, Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE).

Ms Otieno says that domestic violence among girls is meted in three ways – economic, physical and sexual violence. ''On the economic front, you find that in some cases the mother, who is the girl’s first reflection of her gender, doesn’t work, thus is unable to independently provide for needs such as sanitary pads, and the man turns violent when confronted to provide. This affects the girl because she sees her gender as a problem, contributing to stress and poor performance in school,'' explains Otieno.

The harsh environments affect the girls’ self-esteem, making them doubt their capacity to perform well in school and some eventually drop out.

Many girls interviewed in the ActionAid report also say that they not only experience more violence than boys at school, but generally receive unfair treatment from some male teachers, who enjoy scolding and using abusive language towards them when teaching, as well as giving boys more opportunities to answer questions and solve problems in class.

Distance to school

The other killer of girls’ dreams is long distances to school, prevalent in the arid and semi-arid parts of the country.

In Baringo County, three in four parents reported that their children would travel one to three kilometres to get to school, according to a Citizen Report Card on Service Delivery in Public Primary Schools 2016 by the Institute of Economic Affairs. A quarter (26 percent) in Kajiado said their children cover more than five kilometres to reach school.

While boys rent hostels close to school, girls, on the other hand, are unable to do so because culture prohibits them from living outside the homestead unless when married. Consequently, some drop out of school.

''The girl is likely to get to class late in the morning, due to house chores and the long distance. And when they leave for home late, they have insecurity to contend. The counties should allocate some resources to converting some of these public day schools to boarding schools in order to address this issue,'' explains Otieno.

Sanitary towels

Girls from poor families who defy the odds and remain in school for long have yet another challenge to deal with – lack of sanitary facilities.

In 2017, President Kenyatta signed into law the Basic Education Amendment Bill 2016, which allowed for the government to provide free, sufficient and quality sanitary towels to reduce the number of girls missing school during menses.

However, concerns have been raised that the government’s supply is neither consistent nor adequate, resulting in absenteeism. Lack of sufficient sanitary facilities was highly reported in all the counties studied except for Embu and Migori.

Unicef estimates that in Africa, one in ten school-age African girls does not attend school during menstruation, and the Ministry of Education indicates that a girl who lacks sanitary towels during menstruation misses about two weeks of learning every term.

If the law on sanitary towels could be effectively enforced, more girls would remain in school. According to the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey 2015/2016, three in five girls of age 14-17 nationally do not attend classes in secondary school.

Turkana County has the lowest net attendance for girls in secondary school with four percent, three times lower than that of boys (14 percent). It is followed by Tana River (15 percent), Kwale (16 percent), Mandera (17 percent) and Kilifi (18 percent).
Over half of the counties (26) have their secondary school net attendance ratio below the national average (40 percent).

Kirinyaga tops with 68 percent, followed by Nairobi (67 percent), Nyeri (65 percent), Kiambu (59 percent) and Machakos (58 percent).
Kenya’s education attainment gender parity figures in the education system feed into the national literacy rates among men and women which, according to WEF, currently stand at 83 percent for men, and 74 percent for women.