Kirinyaga county leads in school dropouts

 

An empty classroom. [File, Standard]

Kirinyaga county has the highest number of school drop outs.

According to the census results, 24 per cent of people in Kirinyaga dropped out from the institutions where they were registered.

Most school drop outs are in Mwea West and Kirinyaga East.

Embu County follows with 23.1 per cent of school drop outs. Men are the biggest victims with the highest number of dropouts in Embu East Sub county.  

Nationally, almost seven million people have dropped out of the institutions they were registered in. Census survey covered early childhood to university education.

According to the census results, 6.8 million Kenyans dropped out of school while 7.1 million have never gone to school.

The highest percentage of dropouts was among intersex people at 19 per cent. Of the 1,298 intersex people, 20 per cent have never stepped in school.

Contrary to popular belief, Northern Frontier counties lead in student retention.

In Wajir, 75 per cent said they never went to school, but the drop out level is at 0.8 per cent.

Other counties that have high number of drop outs are Nandi, Trans Nzoia and Meru.

In higher education, more women are in universities compared to men. Of the 471,000 university students, about 269,000 are women.

Lamu County has the lowest number of students in university, at only 463. While Tana river has 517 and Kwale has 741 students. A total of 1.5 million Kenyans have attained university education. And 2.7 million people have been to TVETs and middle level colleges.