On 21 November 2018, a new Unesco study placed Kenya among the top eight most inclusive education systems for refugees in the world. The finding suggests the country could climb even higher if access for refugee children improves further.
Kenya hosts nearly half a million refugees and asylum seekers, and in 2017 it joined seven Intergovernmental Authority on Development member states in committing to achieve inclusive education for refugees by 2020. Under that commitment, the country pledged to respond to the distinct learning needs of refugee and returnee boys and girls and to ensure equitable access to education.
The broader global picture remains grim. The Build Bridges, Not Walls Global Education Monitoring Report 2019 says the right to education is among the most threatened human rights for children, including refugees. It estimates that migrant and refugee children have missed the equivalent of more than half a million classrooms, a figure that represents a 26 percent increase since 2000. The report also says refugees have missed 1.5 billion days of school since the New York Declaration in 2016.
Unhcr says education is still one of the biggest unmet needs in Kenya’s refugee camps. The agency points to too few qualified teachers, a shortage of learning materials and weak infrastructure as major obstacles to quality learning.
“It is countries like Kenya with the highest number of refugees but with limited resources who are leading the way in ending exclusionary practices,” says Manos Antoninis, director of the global education report.
Kenya has started rolling out a Refugee Education Management Information System to gather data that could support more inclusive policy. Even so, the government will need more resources to turn policy into practice, especially as it already faces funding pressure in implementing existing programmes.
UNHCR says more than half of the global refugee population, 52 percent, are under 18. It estimates that about four million refugee children are out of school, out of 7.4 million school-age refugee children under its mandate.
The Dadaab refugee complex, which hosts more than 200,000 refugees and asylum seekers, shows how deep the crisis runs. Unesco says there are 120 students for every teacher in pre-primary school and 56 pupils per teacher in primary school. The camp also faces severe shortages of desks and books, with six students sharing a desk and four sharing a textbook in English, mathematics, science and social studies. That is far below the government target of one textbook per pupil.
Conditions in remote and insecure parts of Kenya are often just as difficult. Unesco says teachers in displacement settings need proper training to deliver quality education, yet only 8 percent of primary school teachers in Dadaab and 27 percent in Kakuma were certified in 2016. The workforce is also heavily male, with women making up only 13 percent, a gap linked to safety concerns and cultural bias.
TSC chief executive officer Nancy Macharia has said Al-Shabaab and insecurity in Mandera, Wajir, Lamu and Garissa have made it harder to recruit teachers. In response, the National Assembly’s Education Committee has urged the government to review hardship allowances regularly so that teachers posted to arid areas receive better pay.
Unesco says Kenya’s National Council for Nomadic Education is not enough on its own, because education still needs to be more flexible for pastoralist communities. Data from the Ministry of Education shows that close to one million children are out of school in arid and semi-arid areas.
The report recommends stronger protection of the right to education for migrants and displaced people, along with their inclusion in national education systems. It also calls for education systems to represent migration and displacement histories accurately, challenge prejudice, and prepare teachers to deal with diversity and hardship.
