My un-educated Sufuria is sick
If you ask me, the real cancer of successive Kenyan governments has been the reliance on the philosophy of reactive management. It seems to me that with almost everything in our great country the KE government is always acting after the event. It’s almost as if there are no statistics, no intelligence no rumors , nothing to help people plan for things. It’s just amazing.
I mean if you look at any sector across our economy you are likely to find myriad situations where the KE government is caught absolutely flatfooted. The annual flood and drought famine issue are the best example for this, but the hardest hit sectors are surely without a doubt education and healthcare.
You may remember that the doctors went on that now infamous strike last year demanding a raft of things and paralyzing the KE health system for days on end. The confusion by which the Government handled this was appalling. What was worse was the facts that the strike unearthed.
For one the Doctors claimed that there are only 2,300 doctors employed by the GoK (down by 700 since Jan 2011). Contrast this with the 40 million odd Kenyans and you quickly realize that the issue here is really NOT salaries. I mean how in the world do we expect 2,300 guys to treat us all?? It’s preposterous. Off course we must take a minute to add that this 2300 is not the total number of doctors in Kenya but the only the total number of those employed by the GoK. Then after that we must ask ourselves this: to what extent should healthcare be left to private hands?
According to some estimates (sources below) there are 4,700 healthcare facilities countrywide and only 51% of these are run by GoK. This means that GoK is hoping to treat 4,210 people per heath facility at best and 8,510 per facility at worst. God help us if we get an outbreak of anything.
Now, please note that these statistics do not even take into account wear and tear, healthcare professionals per facility, morale levels, population growth etc etc.? Fellow Kenyan (in Obako voice) at best, we are a country of sick sufuria owners.
Now let’s turn to education. The 2009 census put the total number of school going children (age 7-18) at a little over 13million. Contrast that against a total number of schools in Kenya being rumored to be at 15,367 (nursery to secondary school, public and private). Next, add that the teacher to student ratio in Kenya in 2010 was 1:48.9 and now you will see that changing the number of subjects or reverting to 8-2-2-2 or 4 -4-2-4 doesn’t really matter.
The infrastructure available for education in our country is way below our needs and this is our main problem. The 2011 performance (and the annual decline) is just a symptom of what is really ailing us.
Given all this I can confidently predict here that kids will continue to fail for the foreseeable future. As long as the discussion focuses on number of hours in class or whether or not kids should do exams then we are doing absolutely nothing to help them out. And contrary to popular thinking, taking your kids to private school is akin to clutching two straws as opposed to one; we are still drowning.
But, maybe I am wrong and it’s my sufuria that is uneducated.
Sources
"Next, add that the teacher to student ratio in Kenya in 2010 was 1:48.9 and now you will see that changing the number of subjects or reverting to 8-2-2-2 or 4 -4-2-4 doesn’t really matter."
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Capacity wise way way below what is needed.
Is it that we have small minded guys running some of these ministries, some 'greed', disinterest or no money? Or all of them