In The Standard on April 25, Baraton Universityâs Mr & Mrs Jeff Oganga wrote that they are opposed to the Education Bill, 2012, that seeks to entrench free and compulsory schooling for children.
In an article entitled New law threatens home schooling, the duo hold that that the proposed law will undermine "those who want to train their children differently." That argument cannot hold in a developing country such as Kenya.
Home schooling is well-developed system in the West, particularly US where home school families opt to help teach subjects such as foreign languages. Such parents have had a comparatively sophisticated education that gives them technical ability to provide instruction to their children and means to hire tutors to teach at home.
Most Kenyan families donât have the necessary educational background for home instruction. Nor do they have the pedagogical skills to impart such an education even if they knew what is good for their children. They, therefore, cannot provide a coherent and systematic education experience. They also do not have the means to hire qualified teachers for this purpose.
On the contrary, the hunger for public schooling/education has grown remarkably both in enrolment and formal institutions of education.
According to the Ministry of Education, the number of public and private primary schools increased from 6,058 in 1963 to 27,489 in 2010. Secondary schools increased from 151 to 7,308 in the same period
Enrolment in primary school has grown from 892,000 in 1963 to about 9.4 million pupils in 2010 while secondary education hit 1.7 million students in 2010 from 30,000 in 1963. Free Primary Education and Free Day Secondary Education programmes started in 2003 and 2008 will define the legacy of Kibaki Presidency.
The Education Bill, 2012, and the draft policy paper, Align Education and Training to the Constitution of Kenya (2010) and Kenya Vision 2030 and beyond, seek to address the challenges the massive expansion in school enrolment has posed.
They seek to address equity, quality, relevance and efficiency in the management of educational resources. Apart from arguing that education worthy its salt is one that trains thinkers and not mere reflectors of other peopleâs thoughts, American educator and theologian, Ellen White rooted for an education that inculcated certain values and morals in her book, Education.
reform
The Ministry of Education has acknowledged the need to reform the secondary school curriculum to shift from knowledge reproduction to knowledge production with ICT central to it.
In Democracy and Education, American Philosopher, John Dewey argued that education should aim at not only to improve the quality of basic schooling but also make it accessible to all children because all children had the same destiny, and should be accorded the same quality schooling.
