N. F. MATVEEVA

Institute of Africa, Russian Academy of Sciences

Kenya Keywords:, education, harambee schools, informal schools, slums

On the eve of the declaration of independence of Kenya (1963), the country had 6 thousand primary schools for Africans, which were attended by 890 thousand children, and about 150 secondary schools (31 thousand). students). 80.5% of the country's population was illiterate. Currently, there are over 20 thousand primary schools and more than 6 thousand primary schools in Kenya. secondary schools, where 8.8 million and 1.4 million children study, respectively. The literacy rate of the population is 85%¹.

In his inaugural address (12.12.1964), the first President of independent Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, proclaimed " Harambee!" (Swah, Harambee! - "Let's pull together!"), calling on all Kenyan citizens to join forces in creating a New Kenya based on traditional values. The construction of schools by village communities on the principle of self-help and self-financing is the most typical example of a massive response from the country's population to this call.

HARAMBEE SCHOOLS

The schools that were built were called "harambee schools" - a name that remains with them to this day.

Declaring the development of universal and accessible education to all as one of its highest priorities, the Kenyan Government has focused on school construction in remote and depressed areas in the north and south of the country, where there were practically no schools during the colonial period. In other regions, the population's demand for education could only be met through its own efforts. This was the main reason for the active participation of Kenyans in the construction of schools.

In 1968, a decree was issued on the registration of "Harambee schools" with the Ministry of Education and teaching in them according to the programs developed by it. At the same time, the Ministry began to send its own teachers to these schools, whose work was paid for by the Teacher Service Committee, which operated under the Ministry.

Thus, the "harambee schools" were gradually integrated into the State educational system. First of all, this was the case for Harambee primary schools: the country's authorities generally viewed the participation of the population in the development of universal basic education positively. The situation was different for secondary schools in this category.

The State's secondary education policy was intended to "provide a sufficient number of secondary school places for children with recognized abilities" and was to be implemented primarily through the gradual expansion of the network of State secondary schools. ²

However, not everyone in Kenya, especially those whose children were already in primary school, was willing to put up with this officially planned "gradualism". As a result, the Harambee Secondary School Movement (Harambee Secondary School Movement)³mainly in the more economically developed central Kenya - in areas where residents are engaged in cash-generating commercial agricultural production.

The growing demand for secondary education was also supported by the Africanization of the bureaucracy inherited from colonial times, which began in the first years of independence: the presentation of a secondary education certificate (sometimes incomplete, two-year) was enough to take a job that previously belonged to a specialist of non-African origin*.

However, even in the context of the growth of state allocations for social needs during the" economic boom "of the 1960s and 1970s, funding for Harambee secondary schools and providing them with qualified teachers was carried out on a" residual basis " (a situation that still persists today). The work of such schools largely depends on the financial capacity of the community and donor assistance. This category still includes primary school graduates whose exam results are insufficient to enroll in public secondary schools.

The "Harambee Secondary School Building Movement" has been gradually winding down since the mid-1980s, when a deep and prolonged economic downturn led to a reduction in the population's income and, consequently, its ability to build and maintain schools that had already been built by that time.

In the early 1990s, in the context of further aggravation of socio-economic problems, which forced the Kenyan authorities to make a general reduction in budget funds allocated to the social sphere (in accordance with the stabilization and structural programs of the IMF and WB), changes were made to the policy of financing school education. They significantly increased the importance of compulsory participation of parents of students, which actually contradicted the main principle of the slogan "Harambee!" - voluntary participation. At the same time, the state has practically abandoned the purchase of school equipment, textbooks, and other current and capital expenditures, although it has provided-

* By the mid-1970s, this source of employment for young people who had completed secondary education had virtually dried up.

The Government also paid teachers ' salaries (more than 90% of current government expenditures).

In 2003, fees for primary education were abolished. It was also decided to provide schools with funds for the purchase of textbooks and textbooks in the amount of $12.75 per year for each student in elementary school and $125 - in secondary school. But parents of students continue to bear the costs of buying school uniforms, equipping schools with equipment, paying for their children's admission to school (the amount of payment depends on the place occupied by the school based on the results of final exams), for the child's admission to final exams, and so on.

Kenyan authorities refer to the construction of Harambee schools since the 1990s in the past tense as "a great contribution of the older generation to the development of education in the country"⁵. But they continue to be built, although not on the same scale as it was in the 1960s and 1980s, and mainly in remote," forgotten " by the state areas.

SCHOOLS IN URBAN SLUMS

The emergence of schools in informal urban settlements (slums), created on the initiative of their inhabitants, has been particularly noticeable since the mid-1980s. (although separate schools have appeared before). The main reasons for this were the constant increase in the number of children living in slums who did not attend public schools, the lack of such children, their remoteness and high overhead costs of education.

The situation is very worrying in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where only 60% of children of the appropriate age attend primary ^public schools6. (In this indicator, the Kenyan capital is second only to the North-Eastern Province, where nomadic pastoralists live.) There were 203 primary public schools in Nairobi in 2009. Of these, 67,7 are located in more than 100 different slum areas, where about 60% of the capital's population is concentrated, 8 which, according to 2011 estimates, amounted to more than 3.5 million people.⁹

The capital's Kibera slum district, the largest on the continent in terms of population (approximately 700,000 people), has only 2 public primary schools. 5.2 thousand children study there (3.5 thousand of them are in Olympic Primary School, which is also attended by children from the neighborhoods adjacent to Kibera), and there are more than 70 students per teacher.¹¹ In another area - Matare (about 500 thousand people). residents) - 3 state primary schools can accommodate a maximum of 2 thousand students ¹². Two public schools with 4 thousand students. students - in Korogosho (120-150 thousand inhabitants), three - in Kangemi (100-150 thousand inhabitants)¹⁴, etc.

Slum schools are sometimes referred to as "community schools". This name highlights the fact that they were created by slum dwellers themselves, who come from village communities.

The vast majority of such schools, as they are located in informal settlements, ¹⁵ are classified as non-formal educational institutions. Neither in terms of the state of school premises and classrooms, nor in terms of sanitary conditions, nor in terms of the quality of education, do they meet the standards required for registration with the Ministry of Education. Such informal * schools often huddle in temporary sheet-iron structures built directly on the ground. During the rainy season, mud squelches under students ' feet and they often catch colds. There is no necessary furniture in the classrooms, children do not have textbooks and sometimes even writing materials. Teachers are not qualified, children who are half-asleep from malnutrition do not learn enough educational material, etc. This is how the representatives of the Edmund Rice International charity organization (headquartered in Geneva), who got acquainted with the educational conditions of children in Kibera in 201116 describe the schools created by ^communities.

Let's add that Kibera, which is littered with garbage and various other garbage, is just a few kilometers from the business center of Nairobi, with its skyscrapers and chic restaurants, there are practically no carriageways, there are no urban water and electricity supply systems, there are no medical facilities, police patrols, etc. A similar picture can be observed in other slums. in some parts of Nairobi (perhaps with the exception of the occasional "enclave" found in the slums, such as Matara, which, in comparison with Kibera, look more tolerable).

According to experts of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (Habitat)**, Nairobi's slums are among the most densely populated, unsanitary and unsafe urban areas in ^the world17. For slum dwellers, such extreme conditions are not a reason to refuse to set up schools for their children. But they are not able to provide the Ministry of Education with any documents on the ownership of the land plot where the school is located, nor certificates of professional training of teachers, nor conclusions of sanitary inspections, etc.

The Ministry of Education does not include such schools in its statistics, and unofficial estimates of their number are very approximate. The total number of informal schools (established by communities) in Kenya is approximately 1,600.*** Most of them are located in Nairobi ¹⁸. For example, at the beginning of 2011, there were 228 informal schools in Kibera with 26.4 thousand children enrolled, ¹⁹ in Matara - 75 with 18 thousand students, ²⁰ in Kangemi-88 ²¹.

The challenges facing non-formal schools in Kenya and the difficulties they face are essentially a much-magnified reflection of the current state of education in Africa in general22 and in Kenya in particular. Thus, one of the most pressing problems for Kenyan informal schools is the problem of

* Also referred to as non-formal schools in Kenya (training centers), which use non-formal, i.e. their own programs and methods, as opposed to those approved by the Ministry of Education. Such educational institutions create charitable organizations for children from dysfunctional families and orphans. This article does not cover schools in this category.

** Habitat (English) - letters, place of residence, habitat. UN-Habitat is headquartered in Nairobi.

*** This does not include so-called private schools for the poor, which also do not have registration with the Ministry of Education due to the low quality of education.

The shortage of qualified personnel is many times more acute than in public schools. Teachers with at least some special training account for no more than 15-20% of the total teaching staff in non-formal schools in Nairobi. ²³ Teachers are often employed who have only completed primary or lower secondary education. They compensate for their lack of qualifications with their enthusiasm, but this is not enough for high-quality teaching.

Non-formal schools are characterized by higher staff turnover: teachers are employed on a temporary basis and do not have contracts that specify their rights and obligations. Their salaries are more than half those of State teachers. ²⁴ Unlike the latter, they do not have subsidies for housing, transportation, or paid vacations.

In the absence of income from charitable organizations, non-formal school budgets are formed by paying struggling parents to teach their children (while orphans and children from very dysfunctional families are exempt from payment), as well as voluntary cash collections among community members. As a result, schools have to focus almost all of their efforts on "staying afloat" and have no opportunities for development.

Although non-formal schools are not registered with the Ministry of Education, most of them are taught according to the programs approved by the Ministry. Moreover, it" by default", in fact, recognizes the very fact of receiving an education in them. Thus, graduates of non-formal primary schools have the right to take (for a fairly high fee) exams in public schools for a certificate of primary education. They can continue their education in public secondary schools. However, this is extremely unlikely, as non-formal school students tend to lag behind their peers in public schools, and their grades tend to fall below the level required for admission to a public secondary school. For the same reason, transfers from non-formal to public schools are not allowed.

The country's authorities say that all Kenyan children have equal rights to receive education in public schools, no one denies them to study in them, and the construction of such schools continues ²⁵. Meanwhile, only one public school was built in the first decade of this century in Nairobi, which is in dire need of it. According to non-governmental organizations that advocate for the right to education for children living in slum areas, the main reason is that the Ministry of Education cannot reach an agreement with the Nairobi Mayor's Office on the allocation of land for school construction.²⁶

At the current stage, the main assistance to non-formal schools is provided by charitable organizations, both foreign and local. Their volunteers organize the delivery of drinking water to schools, prepare school lunches*, create educational infrastructure, supply children with textbooks, etc. The assistance provided to teachers in non-formal schools in acquiring professional qualifications is of great importance.

For example, in Matara, volunteers from the charity Dignitas (headquartered in Auckland and Nairobi) are implementing a project that trains teachers and principals from ¹⁰ informal schools27 in the area. The Kangemi Resource Center, established in 2002 by the Brussels-based charity Order of Malta, provides similar assistance to teachers²⁸. In Nairobi and Mombasa, teachers in non-formal schools are trained through the Education for Marginalized Children of Kenya program, developed by USAID and funded by the Aga Khan Foundation. ²

However, charitable assistance is not enough to solve the problem of education for children living in slums.

This problem is complex. Its solution depends not only on taking measures to increase the number of slum children attending public schools, or the number of qualified teachers in community schools, etc. It is necessary, as emphasized in the Program for Slum Upgrading (Kenya Slum Upgrading-KENSUP), to change the very living conditions of these children, the social environment that they live in. which surrounds them.

An agreement on the implementation and financing of the Programme was signed in 2002 by representatives of the Kenyan Government, UN-Habitat and the World Bank. Its main areas of implementation are providing slum dwellers with housing, infrastructure and educational services, land ownership rights, addressing employment problems, and combating HIV / AIDS that is widespread among the slum population.³⁰

The implementation of the first point of the Program was initiated in 2009, when 7.5 thousand inhabitants of Kibera ³¹ received new housing.

THE AUTHORITIES PROMISE...

Over the years of independence, Kenya has achieved a fairly significant increase in the quantitative indicators that characterize the development of the country's educational system. This is largely due to the Kenyans, who used their own resources in the 1960s and 1980s. a considerable number of schools were built and equipped with the necessary equipment.

In fact, the fact that Kenyan citizens had taken on a certain part of the school construction costs created additional sources of funding for the State, as expected-to provide a "quality component" of the educational development process. However, the steps taken by the country's authorities in this direction were far from sufficient, and attempts to coordinate the popular initiative with the state education policy were ineffective. The same can be said about the implementation of State educational programs, which, as stated (and stated) at the official level, are aimed at training national personnel in accordance with the needs of a developing society as an incentive for socio-economic progress.³² In general, the chances with-

* For many children, this is a major factor in their coming to school.

building a base for realizing the potential of education in Kenya remains unrealized.

In 2001. Kenya has adopted a new Education Development Program, which, in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), aims to achieve full primary education coverage by 2015. There was practically nothing new in this program for Kenya (except for specifying specific deadlines for its implementation): After all, the promise to give all citizens of the country a basic education (Education for All) has been a refrain throughout the entire period of independence in all official statements, under all successive Kenyan governments - Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, who has been in power since 2002.

On the one hand, the abolition of primary school fees in 2003 is a demonstration of the Kenyan Government's strong commitment to implementing the MDG provisions. However, as some Kenyan experts in the field of national education point out, this was more of a "political maneuver" than a well-calculated undertaking. ³³

One of the main promises of M. Kibaki during his 2001 election campaign - free primary education - was fulfilled, but in a hurry, without prior conducting any situational analyses, preparing material and technical support, etc. As a result, the challenges facing the Kenyan education system have only worsened. Thus, as the number of children attending school has increased, inequality in access to quality education by regional, ethnic and property parameters has increased even more.

Following the abolition of primary school fees, the situation is particularly unfavorable in rural and urban areas, where the poorest segments of the population live and where the number of children entering school has increased the most. The growth occurred not only at the expense of 6-to 7-year-olds (according to the national norm), but also older children who previously either did not have the opportunity to attend school, or were forced to stop studying before completing the primary cycle. However, when there are up to 100 students in a class, three of them sitting at the same desk, and teachers are forced to reduce the amount of homework to a minimum, because otherwise they simply cannot check them, it is virtually impossible to get a more or less tolerable education.

Ten years have passed since the abolition of tuition fees. And despite the fact that 8 years of primary education is compulsory in the country, there are still about 1 million Kenyan children of appropriate age (²⁵% of the total population) who do not attend primary school34. This makes it quite obvious that it is impossible to implement the MDG provisions within the planned time frame.

But full coverage of children in education cannot be an end in itself: many children from the poorest segments of the population receive essentially surrogate education. This is not to say that the Kenyan Government does not pay attention to this problem: for example, the KENSUP program has already been described as an attempt to improve the living conditions of slum dwellers so that their children can get an education, at least at the level of a standard public school.

As early as 2010, Kenyan authorities told Human Rights Watch that they would comply with its recommendations to "improve education policies to ensure that all Kenyans, especially those from the most marginalized and vulnerable segments of the country's population, have access to the required quality of knowledge"^.35

This is not the first time such promises have been made...

¹ Encyclopedia of Africa, Vol. 2. M " 2010. p. 55; CIA. The World Factbook. Washington, 2012.

² Development Plan, 1964 - 1970. Nairobi, 1964. P. 251.

^{Keller Jr.} 3 Education, Manpower and Development. Nairobi, 1980. P. 202.

⁴ Education in Kenya. Nairobi, May, 2012.

⁵ See, for example: Daniel T. agar. Moi. Which way Africa? Nairobi, 1997. P. 10, 29.

⁶ Current Campaign Petition. Build Primary Schools for the children in Nairobi. Nairobi, 15.12.2010 - http://www.gopetition.com/

⁷ Ibidem.

⁸ Amnesty Report. Case Study: Nairobi's Slums. 03.08.2011. P. 10 -http://hedoesnothaveavoice/blogspot.com/2011/03/

⁹ Population of Nairobi in 2011 - http://numbersandstatistics-org/urban+development/

¹⁰ Facts and Information about Kenya - http://www.Kibera.org.uk/

¹¹ Kibera Journal. Nairobi, 16.02.2011.

¹² Dignitas Project: supporting community schools in Nairobi's Matare slum. 07.03.2012 - http://findwhatworks.wordpress.com/2012/ 03/07

¹³ Korogosho, Central Kenya on world map - http://www.travel-journals.net/

¹⁴ The Kangemi slum in Nairobi - The other side of reality -http://www.Kenya-adviser.con/

¹⁵ For more information about informal settlements, see: Zelenova D. A. South Africa. Live politics of squatters / / Asia and Africa today. 2010, N 9.

¹⁶ Informal Schools in Nairobi // ERI Newsletter. April 2012 -http://txo/dOkLXI59

¹⁷ UN-HABITAT. Kenya Slum Upgrading Program (KENSUP)- http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp See also: Grishina N. V. Health care in Tropical Africa (social aspects). Moscow, Institute of Africa, 2010.

¹⁸ Non-Formal' Schools Aim to Fill Need in Kenya's Slums. VOA Special English Development Report. 23.08.2009. ¹⁹ Kibera Journal... ²⁰ Dignitas Project... ²¹ The Kangemi Slum in Nairobi...

^{Matsenko I. B.} 22 Education // Economic Infrastructure of African Countries, Moscow, Institute of Africa, 2012, pp. 250-266.

²³ Informal Schools in Nairobi...

²⁴ Ibidem.

²⁵ Non-Formal Schools Aim... ²⁶ Current Campaign Petition...

²⁷ Dignitas Project...

²⁸ The Kangemi Resource Centre - http://www.jesuitmissions.ie/

²⁹ USA1D Education Program Expands into Informal Settlements. 06.06.2011 - http://Kenya.usaid.gov./sites/default/

³⁰ UN-HABITAT. Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme...

³¹ The Standard. Nairobi, 16.09.2009.

³² See, for example: Development Plan, 1964-1970 ... P. 17.

³³ The Illusion of Universal Free Primary Education in Kenya -http://africa.peacelink.org/

³⁴ USAID Education Program expands... - http://Kenya.usasild. gov/sites/

³⁵ Informal School in Nairobi...

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