According to Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi NEARLY 1.5 million children do not go to school in Kenya. He said that of all the children who have never enrolled in or who have dropped out of school, 94 per cent are from the rural poor and the majority of them are girls.
Some practices that lock children out of school are child labour, poverty, cultural rituals such as female genital mutilation, child marriage and gender-related issues, Kaimenyi said.
The CS further said that the agriculture sector takes the lion’s share of taking children out of school.
“You will find the majority of them employed in sugar plantations and flower, coffee and tea farms, which is extremely cruel,” he said.
Others are employed as domestic workers or in business.Kaimenyi spoke at a Nairobi hotel during the opening of Operation Come to School, an initiative of Unicef and the Educate a Child organisation.
The initiative seeks to reach out to 300,000 children in nine selected counties by 2017 and enrol them for basic education.The programme will be implemented in pastoral communities in Wajir, Garissa, West Pokot, Turkana, Kajiado and Marsabit counties.
It will also benefit children in informal urban settlements in Nairobi, Mombasa and Lamu counties.The project targets the counties with minimal enrollment and retention rates to increase school enrolment and attendance.
Unicef and EAC are also improving school facilities, including construction of classrooms, solar lighting and sanitation facilities.
“The government is building a boarding primary and secondary school in every constituency and mobile schools to make classes accessible to children from pastoralist communities,” Kaimenyi said.
This will ensure students from nomadic communities remain in school as their parents move with the animals in search of pasture, he said.
The CS said the government has also introduced a school feeding programme.
NS
