which was meant to be the great leveller based on talent is now the great discriminator based on cash .
The following is Ochieng ’ s abbreviated version of how the education sector fell from grace to grass and the once hallowed name of ‘ mwalimu ’ came to be synonymous with strikes , failure and lack of ambition . How what was once a calling became a business .
‘‘ What we did not realise as a nation is that we were consigning our beloved Kenya to the gutters . A vision 2030 cannot be achieved on fraud and we cannot emulate the Asian tigers on fake qualifications and we cannot lie to ourselves that we are developing .’’
Like many of our present day woes the genesis of the education debacle was the ‘ Moi Error ’ where for reasons best known to a small group of political busybodies decided that our education system was not in alignment with national aspirations .
It might even be argued that their thinking was basically nationalistic given that our education system , then based on the British curriculum was a colonial hangover and we as an independent country needed to be free of our former masters in all aspects .
The reason offered for the change was however a highly rationalised argument that the education system produced elites and failed to address the need for technical and vocational training needs that were deemed crucial for our development .
Whoever was tasked to come up with an alternative education system cobbled a system from hell called the 8:4:4 which was supposed to be the panacea to all our development needs . On paper it appeared to be just what Kenya needed even addressing future problems .
Unfortunately even in a one party state that Kenya was the proponents for the system were unable to convince educators that this system was superior to what we had , so a presidential fiat came into effect and Kenya had no option but to change .
It is in the implementation stage that curious things started to happen . One would normally expect that a country would pilot such a system to ensure that what was intended was what was going to happen on the ground .
The first huddle was that the primary education period had been extended by one year so there would not be enough classrooms to accommodate the students as they progressed . New classes had to be built including technical classes .
The education shift therefore gave rise to a massive construction exercise for new classes and soon the enterprising Asians were in the mix . Other Kenyan saw the business opportunity and pitched in to help the government achieve its target .
Kenya of course ran out of money and soon the headmasters who did not get government assistance to build additional classes but who had to comply with the order turned to parents with a building fund request . We had introduced headmasters to business .
The second huddle was that the whole new curriculum needed a new set of books and as the subjects offered in the new system had multiplied by five , each student now needed five times more books than they originally needed .
The same trusted Asian community with their idle printing presses came to the rescue and again many enterprising Kenyans went into partnership with them especially in writing the new books that would be needed to implement the new system .
Children who used to carry five books and an equal number of exercise books , normally left in school , found themselves needing a haversack to carry the many new books they needed . So a new class of educational entrepreneurs had been born .
But the most curious thing to happen was that while this new system was being implemented the old system was retained intact in some schools that apparently were supposed to cater for the foreigners in the country .
In Kenya today you will find a German school , a French school , a Japanese school , a Dutch school and American schools catering to those nationalities . We however have plenty of British schools that we were supposed to overhaul catering to Kenyan elites who rejected the new system .
Even more interesting is that the enterprising Asians who were helping Kenyans switch into the new superior system kept their children in the old system . The very first people to reject the new system were the politicians who had made it into law .
It wasn ’ t long before the now familiar dual education system was in effect and naturally the well healed could choose to have their children in the now perceived and proved superior British system at a premium while the