Students in class in Northeastern Kenya. The county is underprivileged in terms of education. [Photo/ReligionNews]
Education stakeholders form 13 nomadic counties convened in Isiolo County to discern cause of dismal performance in national examinations.
The stakeholders met to debate the matter in the wake of learners and schools from the arid and semi-arid areas performing poorly.
Under the umbrella of National Council for Nomadic Education in Kenya, the forum is also being used as a platform to deliberate and analyze a research conducted over the last nine months, which focused on breaching the gap between the nomadic counties and the rest of Kenya.
The report by Prof. Laban Ayiro concentrated on the gap between the nomadic counties and the rest of Kenya in terms of school dropout rates, proximity of learning institution to learns and the performance in national examinations.
The counties represented include Garissa, Marsabit, Samburu, Tana River, Turkana, Isiolo, Wajir, West Pokot, Narok and Mombasa.
“Retrogressive cultural practices are one of them, FGM, which is part of early marriages. Then distance to schools is an inhibiting factor. The hardship in the area, which leads to poverty,” says Dr. Chris Galgallo, chair Naconek.
According to Ayiro, the study was carried out to improve the learning outcomes in those areas.
“Some of these counties start with 45,000 children in nursery, but when they get to class 8, they are at 9,000. So the system is extremely inefficient in terms of performance,” says Ayiro.