NAIROBI, April 15, 2006 (AFP) - Crammed behind wooden desks, eager pupils crowd a classroom at the Ayani Elementary School in Kenya's largest slum, taking advantage of a trend sweeping Africa: free primary education.
Touted as a ray of hope for the future of the world's most impoverished and least developed continent, millions of African children have been enrolled in schools as a result of such schemes.
And yet, as youngsters await lessons in this ramshackle corner of Nairobi's infamous overcrowded Kibera shantytown, educators, development specialists and others see a well-intentioned system fraught with perils.
For all its benefits, free primary education has not been the panacea that many hoped, as huge influxes of students have overwhelmed understaffed and ill-equipped facilities in many countries, they say.
While relieving poor families of the burden of paying school fees and improving literacy rates, teacher-student ratios have been wildly upset and prospects for pupil advancement remain uncertain at best and dim at worst.
When Kenya introduced free primary education in 2003, more than 1.5 million previously out-of-school children turned up for classes at the country's 18,000 schools, stretching resources and manpower across the east African nation.
At Ayani, enrollment shot up by 729 to 2,022 but only one additional teacher was assigned to the school, bringing the total to 28, according to principal Elisheba Khayeri, who despite the difficulties is a fan of the system.
"We are very happy with this new system," she told AFP, noting that parents are no longer forced to scrape for the 9,000 Kenyan-shilling (125-dollar, 105-euro) enrollment cost and 500-shilling term fees.
"Enrollment is high and the drop-out rate is very low," Khayeri said. "But the classes are very large. We have around 70 kids per class. We have one classroom with 98 children.
"It's not possible to follow the pupils individually ... performance is affected."
Similar problems have been reported in Burundi, Mozambique, Malawi and other African nations that have moved to provide free basic education, according to academics and researchers who met in the Kenyan capital this month to discuss the issue.
In Malawi, critics like Esme Kadzamira of the Center for Education and Research Training at the University of Malawi, say the government moved too quickly and without proper oversight when it implemented the program in 1994.
"The whole system has failed," she said. "It is a total failure.
"Everything was crisis management: the recruitment of teachers, their training in two weeks .... they did not have material, they refused to teach in rural and remote areas, some used some fake certificates," Kadzamira said.
"We found some schools with 3,000 children and four teachers," she said, noting that some communities were forced to demand fees from parents to pay for supplies and salaries despite the scheme's intentions.
"It takes more time for children to get literate because the quality (of teaching) has gone down," Kadzamira said. "We have wasted 12 years."
In Burundi, which is emerging from 12 years of civil strife, the free primary education scheme launched last year faces numerous seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
"Yes, we have problems, we lack teachers, schools and educational materials," said Catherine Mbengue of the UN children's agency UNICEF in Burundi. "We don't have enough money but we are moving in the right direction."
"We have to send all our children to school if we want to stop poverty from being passed down from one generation to the next," she said. "If a country is to develop, education must be for everyone, that is the basis for everything."
While such sentiments are widely shared, they are also met with skepticism by some convinced the programs introduced thus far don't go far enough.
"The scrapping of enrollment fees is not a miracle solution because education is never free," said education consultant Marie Dorleans who attended the Nairobi conference.
Others agree.
"There are hidden costs," said Aster Haregot of UNICEF, pointing out that the need for school uniforms, transportation and lunch, have made free education inaccessible to some children.
Despite the surge in students brought about by free education schemes an estimated 45 million children in sub-Saharan Africa are still not in schools, according to UNICEF.
In Kenya, where 60 percent of the country's 32 million people live on less than one dollar a day, 22 percent of school-age children, about 1.7 million, are still not enrolled, officials said.
Many are forced to stay home because the combined effect of poverty and HIV/AIDS on their families, according to Ruth Owuor, an education advisor to the Kenyan government.
"Quite a number of children don't come to school ... kids take care of their parents who are HIV positive," she said.
Such hurdles were faced by 14-year-old AIDS orphan and current Ayani student Maureen Akinyi who is now second in her class of 75 after missing a year.
"I was away from school for one year," she says, a red ribbon, the symbol of the fight against AIDS prominently displayed on her beige sweater. "There was no money to go to school."
Even now that she is back in classes, Akinyi's teachers fear for her future.
"There is a lot of wastage," said instructor Leah Asego. "We can take care of her in primary school, but what next? She doesn't have the money to go to secondary school. There are so many like her."
060415
AF060427
Copyright ©AFP 2006. All Rights Reserved. AFP articles contained on the AEGiS web site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without AFP's prior written permission. You may make one copy of each article for your personal, non-commercial use only; more copies would require AFP's prior written permission. obtained from the owners of any trademarks or copyrighted materials whose marks and materials are included in AFP photos or materials. Therefore you will be solely responsible for obtaining any and all necessary releases from whatever individuals and/or entities necessary for any uses of AFP stories, photos or graphics. http://www.afp.com/
AEGiS is a 501(c)3, not-for-profit, tax-exempt, educational corporation. AEGiS is made possible through unrestricted grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, Elton John AIDS Foundation, the National Library of Medicine, Bridgestone Firestone Trust Fund, and donations from users like you. Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2006. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.
©1990, 2006 - AEGiS. AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content.
