How COVID-19 Affected Learning in Kenya

When Kenyan schools closed their doors in March, after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the country, there were no alternative learning options.

The closure of institutions not only affected learners and teachers but it also brought forth numerous economic and social issues, including interrupted and loss of learning, education exclusion, homelessness, nutrition and economic crisis, childcare challenges and increase in teenage pregnancy cases, financial cost implication to households, and sexual exploitation among others.

The effects have been more severe for the underprivileged children and their households from the urban poor communities.

On July 7^th, due to the rise of the new cases of infection to 8,000, the government, through the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Prof. George Magoha, announced that the school calendar had been lost due to the restrictions geared towards stopping the spread of the virus.

The announcement came when the government, through the Ministry of Education, was rolling out a new competency-based curriculum; thus, the announcement threatened the loss of education gains for over 18 million school-going children nationally.

As schools had closed children were sent home. Not only were they missing important learning time (most community schools and households do not have the capacity for online learning) but many children were not receiving the daily school meal that provided valuable calories and nutrition for poor households.

Children being at home also placed a greater burden of care on parents who are under pressure to generate livelihoods amidst the economic hardship.

Learning and Childhood Development in Kenya

The education system plays a crucial role in Kenya since it instils hope for a brighter future among learners in Kenya. It also enables children to grow and develop into responsible adults for future tasks. The education program could lose all the gains because of the measures to stop coronavirus spread. Based on the government’s current decision, school-going children risk the loss of a full academic year and late graduation with about one year wasted. For the first time, the intake program scheduled for January every year will not take place. The government also announced the change in the examination calendar; therefore, the national exams scheduled for the end of the year were cancelled and pushed for 2021. Scholars argue that education’s negative impact is similar to the experience after the 1982 coup attempt, which saw colleges and universities closing for nine months.

To keep the learners engaged, and mitigate the loss of essential learning time, the government of Kenya through the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) stepped up measures to facilitate learning through different platforms such as the Kenya Education Cloud, TV, radio, ed-tech apps, and mobile phones.

Children in the informal urban settlements and the poor rural areas, where most learners in public schools came from, ran the risk of encountering the negative effects of extended closures of the schools. Staying out of school exposed the children to the risk of increased child labour, teenage pregnancies, and child marriages, defilement of minors, and drug and substance abuse.

The closure of schools led to the rise in teenage pregnancies, according to media reports.

Further, the economic restraints among poor pastoralist communities have led to increased early marriages where some families from poor backgrounds offered their young girls for marriage to receive financial assistance from richer families.

A report also shows that adolescent boys resorted to crime during the extended period of school closures.

The Private School Sector and Coronavirus

Private schools solely rely on school fee remittances by students to run the affairs of the schools. However, the coronavirus spread and the resultant closure of schools put the over 10,000+ private primary and secondary schools in jeopardy since it cut access to finances. Lack of finances means that about 300,000 teachers stayed out of school with about six months of no pay.

To stay afloat, some schools opted to organize online classes to generate income for survival.

However, the less developed private schools in low-income communities faced a higher risk of administrative issues because of the difficulty to engage in online learning.

Mitigation through Digital Technology

Remote learning has also faced a lot of challenges due to the lack of well-defined infrastructure. With both children and teachers at home, the government had limited time for preparation of the sudden change. Most of the teachers and education stakeholders have limited knowledge for online dissemination of knowledge, lack of detailed costs of teaching and preparation of online teaching, online assessment and evaluation. This has further resulted to slack in the implementation of online learning.

Teachers and students were also very innovative. Kids were taught on social media platforms such as through WhatsApp video calls, zoom and skype.

However, this platform was not accessible to kids from humble backgrounds as well as those residing in remote locations due to lack of access to the internet.

The coronavirus’s negative impacts on learning in Kenya have renewed discussions on the need for the government’s effort to commit to accelerating “digischool,” a digital learning program. Digischool aims to integrate the use of digital technologies in academic engagement across all public schools in Kenya. The coronavirus serves as a wake-up call on all stakeholders in the education sector to take advantage of the situation and embrace online learning to complement in-person classroom learning.

It also presents an opportunity for teachers and students to undertake digital skills training to take advantage of the technologically-oriented world’s opportunities.

January 4th 2021

There are neither additional classes, ablution facilities, nor complementary funding for schools as all levels of Kenyan learners resumed in-class learning on January 4 after a nine-month disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kenya has 23,000 public primary schools with more than 12 million pupils and more than three million students in secondary schools.

Kenya’s Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha, however, said that the government will disburse KShs 14 billion ($127.27 million) for secondary schools and more than KShs 4 billion ($36.37 million) for primary schools as capitation funds to schools — the normal amount the sector gets anyway, even without the pandemic.

He called upon headteachers to be innovative and set up extra classes out in the open air. He said that the government had ordered new desks for public schools and has delivered close to 500,000.

In line with the public health guidelines that have been set for COVID-19, the institutions will be required to have thermal guns, hand washing stations with running water, and stock up on masks. The CS, however, acknowledged that there was currently a shortage of one million face masks meant to be provided to children from poor backgrounds.

What now?

As a country, there is a need to navigate through these challenges and ensure continued access to provision of quality, equitable and inclusive education as cited in Article 53 of the constitution during and after the pandemic. The government should develop measures and policies that are practical to each and every member of the society to ensure the inclusion of all.

As the total number of deaths from the pandemic continues to rise, it is still not clear what the situation will be like in our schools even as learning has resumed across all learning institutions, thereof.

The government must, therefore, include digital learning as part of a new policy intervention necessitated by the pandemic, otherwise, it will be difficult to sustain education in the country if left to parents and in-class sessions only.