Kindergaten tuition is higher that uni fees

 What I paid for my university for four years cannot even cover a year in an average private primary school in Nairobi

Recently, a persistent, if not stubborn insurance saleslady tried to sell me an education policy. She was quite convincing. Maybe, it was the short, revealing skirt she wore or her 'promising' cleavage. I almost bought the policy. But it was way out of reach for a simple columnist like me.

The cheapest offer was for a Sh15,000 monthly premium for four years that will guarantee fee payment for my daughter until she joins Class Four, after which, I would be required to top up the premium. I was to be stuck in that arrangement until my angel is done with university.

Is there a job that offers that kind of security anymore for one to have such a life time commitment? In the past, our parents held on to jobs, and that kind of discipline was possible. Nowadays, by the time one turns 30, he would possibly have passed through the hands of four employers, and dabbled in business and failed.

A job nowadays hardly lasts two years. In between, there is a lot of suffering and gnashing of teeth and a life full of uncertainty. I would love to know the uptake of education policy insurance covers and how many people sustain such exorbitant subscriptions.

But the real devil here is the cost of kindergarten education in Kenya. The middle-class is being given a raw deal and in a race to belong, they have bought into the hype. Actually, not just kindergarten, but the cost of education in Kenya is now impossible.

And wives, in their quest to have kids who can swim, play tambourine and keyboard, speak French, Spanish, and accented English (British or America) by the age of three, are not helping matters at all.

A colleague recently was shopping for a decent kindergarten for his son and the things he was told left him livid. For Sh60,000 a term, his toddler would be taught, among other things, how to swim, ballet and to be multi-lingual. Any rational quantification of the pricing model defies logic. Some of the things enlisted are there just to inflate the fee.

I have seen even kids as young as eight years old being taken for trips outside the country. What meaningful impact will such trips have on an eight-year-old? School teachers and entrepreneurs see parents as ATM machines.

It doesn't help much that teachers are now treated as gods, and their word is taken as law. Expensive schooling does not translate into quality education. Schools are now nothing more than drilling centres.

There is no doubt that the academies that flourished from the 1990s and early 2000s produced kids who performed well in national examinations, but had difficulty processing more complex stuff in high school.

For some, they could cheat their way to university and where serious learning is supposed to be done in courses such as Medicine and Actuarial Science, many A-students did drop for something 'simpler.' The kids who go through expensive schooling invariably adjust poorly in high school and higher education and in life generally.

But in Kenya, we are generally stupid or too lazy to question. I went through public schooling all my life, and the system used to work, save for the jiggers that used to feast on our toes back then. School was cheap. What was paid for me in high school is not even enough for a term in a middle-class school. Even when you factor inflation and everything, the cost is still prohibitively high.

What I paid for my university for four years cannot even cover a year in an average private primary school in Nairobi.

Why a parent in Buruburu would want their child to learn ballet is one of those things I will never understand. What can be more impractical? Why pay exorbitantly for your child to learn swimming when you can take the kid to your church or neighbourhood pool and pay less.

We need to rethink education in Kenya. There is always a danger when we privatise essential services like education, health and security. Sustaining the greed of capitalists is impossible. Let us sit back and rethink why we pay an arm and leg for a child to be taught how to spell.

We learnt under trees!  I sat on a brick in my entire lower primary and I think I turned out just right.

Children are not that special when you think about it.

@nyanchwani

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