How education system fails deserving high school leavers

Most KCSE graduates lack opportunities for further training or education. [File, Standard]

They finish school full of hope and dreams, certificates in hand. But for many of Kenya’s young people, the end of secondary school marks the end of the road.

After 12 years of learning, they are thrust into the world with no training, no skills and no clear path forward.

An analysis by The Standard shows that each year, hundreds of thousands of students exit the classroom only to find closed doors. 

Frustrated and locked out of opportunity, many become vulnerable to crime, radicalisation and political manipulation. 

Most school leavers are forced to navigate a brutal informal economy—selling street wares, riding motorbikes, or idling in urban slums.

The recent release of university and college placement results has only underscored the magnitude of the crisis.

Data from the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) paints a bleak picture: Of the 965,501 candidates who sat the 2024 KCSE examination, only 310,502 were placed in universities or colleges.

This means over 650,000 learners, nearly two-thirds, have been left behind, with no clear path to further education or skills training.

This is not new. Over the past nine years, more than 6.8 million students have sat and completed the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).

Yet, some 4,860,449 students, or over 70 per cent of all KCSE candidates from 2016 to 2024, were not placed in any form of post-secondary education, despite government efforts to expand university and TVET capacity.

Placement data from that period shows only 1,016,216 students were admitted to universities, while 990,242 joined Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions.

This means just 29 per cent transitioned to further education, leaving the vast majority without access to structured skills training, college, or university education.

The situation has worsened over time. In 2016, 418,627 KCSE candidates did not proceed to university or TVET. By 2024, that number had surged to 683,243, even with expanded university and TVET slots.

The data paints a grim picture for Kenya’s youth, especially as the economy struggles to absorb unskilled labour.

Less than two years later, a wave of deadly destruction has hit the country led by young people to agitate for governance change. 

Without training or further education, these young people are thrust into a saturated informal sector or left idle, a situation experts warn is fueling rising unemployment, crime and unrest.

This growing pool of idle, unskilled youth is now widely viewed as a breeding ground for resentment and hopelessness, which is increasingly manifesting as open dissent.

In October 2020, then-President Uhuru Kenyatta, while receiving the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report at Bomas of Kenya, cautioned the nation against ignoring the youth crisis.

“The second big problem we have is our young people. We have a youth bulge that is a time bomb that, if not properly handled, can blow this country into pieces,” Kenyatta warned. He emphasized that addressing the youth crisis requires fixing the economy first.

“We must stop this culture of using and disposing of our youth and instead, systematically and in a very clear and thought-out manner, enable our young people, who are the future of our country, to be a productive part of society. I cannot do it alone. We must engage in that conversation together,” he said.

The education system, once seen as a bridge to a better life, is increasingly becoming a dead end morphing into a national emergency.

Alex Mosomi, a Commerce graduate from the University of Nairobi, now sells sausages and eggs on Nairobi’s streets. After four years of job hunting, he turned to hawking for survival.

“My parents sold land to pay my fees. Now I sell smokies, nine years after graduation. Was it all for nothing? We were told education is the key, but no one told us the lock was broken,” he told The Standard during the Saba Saba protests.

Mosomi supports the demonstrations, citing frustration over broken systems that fail to support even educated youth.

Economist Ken Gichinga warns that the lack of a structured transition from secondary school poses a serious risk to national planning and security.

“What we are seeing is not just a failure of education policy; it’s a failure of national planning. You cannot churn out nearly a million school leavers every year and have no place for them to go. You are not just neglecting them — you are laying the foundation for instability,” said Gichinga.

Education stakeholders also fault the government for failing to develop policies that equip young people with practical, income-generating skills.

“We have seen tremendous effort in expanding technical colleges, but enrolment in these institutions remains low. Perhaps that is where we should focus our energy, rather than building more institutions that remain empty,” said Janet Ouko Muthoni, an education policy expert.