EDUCATION

At the beginning of the 2000’s, a national program was launched by the Kenyan government to fight against illiteracy and promote primary and secondary education in rural areas. Since January 2003, primary education is free and compulsory, which has led to an increase in primary school registrations (by 25% between 2002 and 2003). But the Free Primary Education Program did not solve all the problems linked to education. The government and the population confront two major challenges:

For more than ten years, the community of Yenzuva has committed itself to addressing these two issues.

Give Every Child a Chance to Go to Nursery and Primary School

Community members are mostly concerned by late schooling and the quite low attendance in primary school, which has several causes and sometimes huge consequences on children’s future.

More than 800 pupils aged from 6 to 15 years are going to Yenzuva Primary School (YPS), which opened in the early 1980’s. But in this rural area mainly populated by farmers, many children living far from YPS don’t go to school, either because they are too young to walk long distances, or because their presence is needed at home for farm work.

Labours à Yenzuva

Ploughing

An additional problem is posed by orphanage. Although this is still a taboo, many children living in Yenzuva sub-location have lost one or two parents. Most of these orphans live with their grand-parents, uncles or cousins, but they are often requested to help on the farm and therefore, miss school quite frequently (especially during the harvesting season).

And last but not least, most of the children go to school quite late, around the age of 6, because nursery schools are not free. As they only speak their vernacular language (kikamba) when they are at home, primary school pupils often have difficulties in speaking English and Swahili, the two official languages. Consequently, their results at the end of primary school exams are not as good as the results of their fellow pupils that live in urban areas and are mixed with other ethnic groups. Apart from this poor performance in languages, children living in Yenzuva are also penalized by the absence of computer facilities in their school. Since the village is not connected to the electricity network, most of them had not even seen a computer up to a recent date, whereas most of the students going to other schools in the district attend computer classes.

Aware of these weaknesses and difficulties, the founder members of St Bridget Self-Help Group undertook in :

• Build up school infrastructures close to families living far from Yenzuva Primaty School so as to increase school registration and attendance among young children;
• Open a nursery school to enable young children to join school before primary education (the aim is to encourage children to learn and speak English as early as possible);
• Set up a progressive school fees system that could give every child, including orphans, the chance to go to school;
• Build up infrastructures (dining hall, dormitories, etc.) necessary to accommodate pupils on the compound;
• Provide the pupils with three meals a day;
• Provide pupils and teachers of the nursery school with computer facilities so that children can learn how to use a computer from the age of 4;
• Set up a partnership with Yenzuva Secondary School to give secondary school students an access to computer facilities.

The main objectives of these efforts are to promote early schooling (and early learning of English and Swahili) and to guarantee equal rights and opportunities for every child.

Enable More Children to Go to Secondary School

Primary Kids going back Home

Elèves du primaire de retour de l’école

Yenzuva inhabitants have noticed that few children pursue their education after passing the Kenyan Primary School Certificate. This low level of registration in secondary schools can be explained by :

• the high cost of secondary education (school fees generally range from 12 000 to 60 000 shillings a term, which is equivalent to 120 to 600 euros ; for comparison, the middle-income is comprised between 4500 to 5000 shillings – 45 to 50 euros);
• the lack of infrastructures (there are 18 000 primary schools around the country but only 4000 secondary schools) and teachers.

Yenzuva secondary school

Classe école secondaire

Classe école secondaire

To overcome these problems and enable more children to go to secondary school, the community committed itself to building a new school in Yenzuva. The project, launched in 1987 and sponsored by the catholic missionaries settled in the neighbouring village, became reality almost 20 years later: Yenzuva Secondary School opened in January 2006 and was registered by the Kenyan government in August 2006.

But this young school is still lacking many facilities. As most of Yenzuva dwellings, the school has no access to tap water nor electricity. Only three teachers (for more than 100 students) are employed by the government. The other teachers are mostly voluntary workers or young graduates paid by the school committee when funds are sufficient, which is rarely the case. Most of the books and furniture “earned” by the school are either given by well-wishers or lent by neighbouring schools and shops. Parents, mainly farmers, are unable to pay the half of the school fees required (24 000 shilling per year). A few students recently got a bursary from the government but it was hardly sufficient to cover the third of the total amount of school fees. As a consequence, students are often sent home for money, and they are only readmitted in class on the condition that they bring back to school enough money to cover their school fees balance.