Foundations of Sports Development in Kenya: The Secondary Schools’ Model

Sports conducted out of schools is basically an unorganized form of sport and more of a physical activity engagement among kids while engaging in multiple activities such as tending goats, cows or looking after their younger siblings.

Among the older children, their sporting practices are a modification of school sports and the rules are shaped by the elite perception of their chosen sports. The overall mechanism of sports development and promotion is elitist in nature as emphasized in a school curriculum. The nation’s visible sporting activities are football, running, rugby, cricket among others.

The distribution of sporting activities in Kenya is based on regions. This regionalism of sports is explained by geographical nature of the country. Specifically, the physical geography of Kenya clearly demarcates the dominance of sports culture and endowment.

For example, athletics is domiciled in the Great Rift Valley while football and rugby is predominantly an inter-lacustrine phenomenon, evidenced by the national competitions spectacles during Kenya Secondary Schools Sports activities.

The most obvious performances are very predictable on a regional basis, although there are occasional upsets and performance disappointments.

Sports play an important role in the socialization process among the youth in Kenya. The community and the government play complementary roles in the commitment toward sports participation. However, schools are the central foci in the early introduction to organized sports among the youth and this establishes the dependency on the school system as the granary of elite sports in Kenya.

The Government, through the respective ministries of Education and Sports, Culture and Arts, controls the policy framework directing the management and functioning of school programs from primary schools through secondary schools.

However, these policies have not contributed toward the desired frameworks for the realization of improved sports performance due to incompleteness and incompetency of the policy formulators and subsequent implementation. The philosophy of sports development is the fundamental flaw when it comes to prioritization of resources and outcomes.

The absence of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms have challenged the status quo with respect to the alienation of the experts and professionals with the requisite knowledge and skills on matters of sports education and policy, thus policies are ill-informed leading to contradictions between the performativity of sports within the Ministries of Education and Sport, Culture and Arts.

Take, for instance, the much touted “new” curriculum which presupposes to create a “new” pathway in academic progression among Kenyan children into career world via sports and talents. Interestingly, the conceptualization of this pathway assumes the obvious competencies in sports and talents as a natural ability continuum pegged to genetic endowment.

The sequencing of physical activities from early childhood education programs is an appropriation of the normal child’s development without the benefits of cognitive instruction and the expectation that sports are tailor-made to one-size-fits-all. This curriculum should ideally be subjected to critical expert review and informed by research before it being fully implemented for the good of the nation’s future. Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) should tap into the pool of sectoral professional experts in the country to benefit from their wealth of experience and technical know-how in order to develop a functional and workable curriculum that will withstand the test of time and relevance.

The effectiveness of sports and talents pathway after senior secondary, if the proposed curriculum is implemented in its current form in toto, lies squarely on what constitutes a career in the sports industry. Presently, there is very little attraction within the sports industry that can be called a career.

I am not demeaning the monetary gains and employment opportunities some of Kenya’s athletes and other sports persons have received in the past; these windfalls are not considered in the true sense of the economics of sports. Serious scholarship and research need to be conducted to understand and inform decision-making on sports and co-related sectors.

The ministries in charge of sports and education should collaborate to come with clear, informative and harmonized documents that will operationalize professionalization and commercialization of the sports industry in the country to attract investments and challenge the current status of sports organizations or federations. The public-private partnerships should be enhanced with the focus of sports development and provision of facilities across the nation. This will improve grassroots community participation in sports and through sports.

In a nutshell, the role of secondary schools is fundamental in the realization of professional development in sports for the continued success and dominance of Kenya in international competitions.

This must, however, be complemented by the expansion of tertiary sports structures and opening up of scholarships to attract talented students to Kenyan universities so as to continue to develop high school talents for the national good.