Just a week after the North Eastern regional coordinator warned parents against allowing their children to stay away from school, a new survey report by the Ministry of Education has revealed the top three counties with the highest drop out rates among school going children.
Topping the list is Mandera County which recorded a massive tally of 124,800 children who are already out of school.
This represents a 15 percent of the entire population of school-going children out of primary schools.
At the second position is Turkana County which recorded 10 percent and thirdly placed Garissa County recorded 8.9 percent of primary school kids out of school.
Other counties that closely followed Garissa include Wajir, West Pokot County, Isiolo, Tana River, and Nairobi respectively in a descending order.
One-third of those already out of school are mostly children living with disabilities.
These statistics were made public last week by the primary schools' education director at the Ministry of Education, Habat Abdi.
“The numbers of children already out of school is alarming, Mandera county represents 15 percent of children who never go to school at all, Turkana at 10 percent, Garissa county at 8.9 percent and also Wajir 6.7 percent,” Abdi said while releasing the report findings.
Notably, many of the dropouts are girls from very poor families.
Interestingly, a majority of the boys who drop out of their school was found to be as a result of either sickness or indiscipline cases.