How much is needed for free secondary education?

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

04 June 2017

It appears that the Jubilee Party of intends to make free secondary school education one of its campaign issues in the coming general election. That’s a very good idea because, as Michael Messer and Linda Creed wrote in the popular song The Greatest Love of All: “I believe that children are our future; teach them well and…” Investing in education is the most important thing that any society can do.

I have seen media reports indicating that Sh5 billion has been set aside this financial year for refurbishing secondary schools. However, this is just but a drop in the ocean and it is unlikely to make any meaningful change.

I have searched for the total number of public secondary schools in Kenya and, sadly, I could not find any reliable figure. The best estimate I found was 3,280. Let’s round it off to 3,300. If the Sh5bn is distributed evenly to all these institutions, each would get about Sh1.5 million. Is this enough?

Well; I am closely involved in the affairs of my former secondary school and I know for a fact that over the last five years, it has been spending roughly Sh5m annually in the refurbishment of its facilities. It is only this year – about Sh30m later – that the improvements have started becoming visible.

Therefore, I doubt highly if Sh1.5m would make any meaningful difference to the facilities in a school – especially considering that, for many decades, the government has not been providing funds for infrastructure improvement. From my experience, I think the government should work with about Sh15m per school in the first year. That is, a total budget of about Sh50bn – not Sh5bn! Afterwards, the government will need to set aside additional money for day-to-day running expenses.

According to the Education Sector Report in the 2017/18 National Budget, there are about 2.5 million pupils in public secondary schools  About 80% of them (2 million) are borders and 20% (about 500,000) are day-scholars.

The government has prescribe the school fees that schools should charge; these are Sh53,553 for boarders and Sh9,374 for day-scholars. Therefore, the cost of 2 million boarders will be Sh107bn and that for 500,000 day-scholars will be Sh4.7bn.

The total fees come to Sh111.7bn.

Now, currently, the government subsidises the secondary school fees at the rate of Sh12,870 per student. This money is sent directly to schools and added to what the parents pay. The total subsidy is for 2.5 million pupils is about Sh32bn.

So now the total cost of providing secondary education completely free of charge comes is the Sh111.7bn paid by parents plus the Sh32bn current subsidy. That is Sh145bn.

Now, the 2017/18 budget allocated only Sh34bn for free secondary education. This is just enough for the current subsidy of Sh12,870 per student. So, the campaign promise cannot be implemented in January 2018.