About 500,000 Students Will Not Complete Senior Secondary School By 2028 – UNESCO Report.
Despite significant investment to ensure 100% transition from primary school, one-third of secondary school students do not complete their education and will continue to drop out.
According to the most recent United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report on countries’ progress toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4, nearly 35% of Kenyan secondary school students will not complete upper secondary education by 2030. This is even before considering the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This means that nearly half of the 1.4 million learners who are currently in Grade 5 and are expected to enter junior secondary school next year will not complete their senior secondary school studies in 2028.
However, this will be a significant improvement from 2015, when only 47.7 percent of learners completed their secondary education before the transition policy was implemented in 2018.
According to data from the Ministry of Education, thousands of students fail to enroll in secondary schools each year, while others drop out after starting for a variety of reasons, including teenage pregnancy, death, a lack of school fees, and a failure by parents to prepare them to report to school.
Over the years, school enrollment has been erratic. There will be 10.17 million primary school students by the end of 2020, up from 10.2 million in 2016, 10.4 million in 2017, 10.5 million in 2018, and 10 million in 2019.
Secondary school enrollment increased from 2.7 million in 2016 to 3.5 million in 2020.
According to the Economic Survey 2021, the primary to secondary school transition rate was 91% in 2020, up 5.5% from the previous year. This, in turn, has put a strain on secondary school infrastructure.
Primary school completion appears to be higher than secondary school completion, which appears to have the most waste. In 2015, the number of learners who completed lower secondary (Form 1 and 2) dropped to 87.6 percent, while those who advanced to Form Four were only 47.7 percent. The government intends to raise this to 57% by 2025 and 64.5 percent by 2030.
Kenya outperformed other East African Community members on various metrics used by Unesco to track progress toward the SDG, which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.
While other countries in the region expect high rates of out-of-school upper secondary youth to continue, Kenya expects to reduce that rate to 4.7% by the deadline.
Botswana had the highest completion rate of primary school learners in Africa in 2015, at 97.7%, and aims to achieve 100% by 2025. Kenya came close with 92.7 percent, with the government aiming for 100% completion in the next four years.
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The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) evaluated countries’ progress based on early childhood education attendance, out-of-school rate, completion rate, minimum proficiency level, trained teachers, and public education expenditure.
Kenya ranks highly in terms of public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP when compared to other African countries. Only Lesotho (8.2%), Botswana (7.1%), and Ethiopia (5.6%) spent more than Kenya (5.4%).
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About 500,000 Students Will Not Complete Senior Secondary School By 2028 – UNESCO Report.
