Recent weeks have witnessed a disturbing escalation in political discourse aimed at regionalizing and ethnicising Kenya’s education institutions, threatening the foundations of our national cohesion.
The most egregious example came from a senior politician who lamented that high-performing students from some regions were being assigned to less prominent institutions while students from other areas gained admission to more prestigious national schools.
Troublingly, this proprietary framing of national schools as ethnic enclaves represents a fundamental misunderstanding of their constitutional purpose and threatens decades of progress toward educational equity.
Such statements betray the constitutional principles upon which our education system rests. Indeed, political leaders bear responsibility for championing laws that promote national unity and operationalizing education policies consistent with constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination. Consequently, when divisive pronouncements that territorialize national schools along ethnic lines emanate from senior political offices, they represent an abdication of constitutional duty that demands unequivocal condemnation.
To understand the gravity of these statements, we must examine the legal framework that governs our education system. This framework is unambiguous and applies universally across all Kenyan communities.
Specifically, Article 27 of the Constitution guarantees every Kenyan equality before the law and prohibits discrimination on any ground, including race, ethnicity, or place of origin. Furthermore, Article 43 affirms the right to education, while Article 53 guarantees every child free and compulsory basic education.
These provisions apply equally to children from Kiambu, Wajir, Kisumu, Mombasa, and every corner of our republic. In operationalizing these constitutional guarantees, the Basic Education Act of 2013 provides equitable access to quality education regardless of geographical location or ethnic background.
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Building on this legal foundation, Section 9 of the Basic Education Act enshrines the national goals of education: fostering nationalism, patriotism, and promoting national unity while respecting Kenya’s diverse cultural heritage.
Accordingly, these goals mandate that education transcend ethnic, racial, and regional divisions to build a cohesive nation. In furtherance of these objectives, national schools represent carefully designed educational facilities established to serve all Kenyan children who have demonstrated academic excellence through their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education results.
Significantly, the Ministry of Education’s quota-based distribution system deliberately draws learners from all forty-seven counties, ensuring these institutions function as microcosms of our national diversity.
Against this backdrop, the suggestion that particular national schools belong to specific ethnic communities fundamentally misapprehends their nature as institutions of the republic.
These are national schools, established to serve the entire country and funded by taxpayers from Mandera to Msambweni, from Turkana to Taita Taveta. Moreover, the Ministry’s placement system operates on merit and regional balance, ensuring academic excellence is rewarded while maintaining the constitutional imperative of national integration. Therefore, to characterize this framework as unjust displacement represents a rejection of Kenya’s founding principle as a unified nation-state.
It is crucial to clarify that our Constitution provides for devolution as a means of decentralizing governance and bringing services closer to citizens, not as a license for ethnic balkanization. On the contrary, devolution empowers county governments to manage local affairs and deliver services efficiently within a unified national framework.
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However, it does not authorize the fragmentation of national institutions into ethnic fiefdoms or the territorialization of education along tribal lines. Rather, national schools remain national precisely because they serve the constitutional mandate of integration, not segregation. Thus, when politicians attempt to transform devolution into an instrument of ethnic exclusivity, they pervert its purpose and undermine the very unity it was designed to strengthen.
In this context, to negate this policy framework through casual political pronouncements represents a dangerous degradation of public discourse where matters of profound national significance are treated with cavalier disregard for constitutional values. Consequently, when those entrusted with political responsibility resort to divisive language that undermines national cohesion, we must question whether they possess the wisdom and restraint required to safeguard our unity.
More broadly, the pattern emerging from such statements reveals a calculated strategy to undermine decades of progress toward national integration. Evidently, this is not merely about education policy; it represents a systematic attempt to fragment Kenya along ethnic lines, transforming institutions that were designed to unite us into instruments of division.
Ultimately, when education—which should be the great equalizer—becomes yet another arena for tribal territorialization, we risk losing the very foundation of our shared nationhood.
In light of these dangers, Kenyans of goodwill must refuse to be drawn into the revolutionary shenanigans orchestrated by self-seeking politicians who profit from division while contributing nothing to national development. Indeed, these political entrepreneurs of ethnic animosity depend on our complicity—our willingness to accept simplified narratives that reduce complex educational policy to tribal grievances. Clearly, when we allow ourselves to be manipulated by such rhetoric, we betray the constitutional values that guarantee our collective security and prosperity.
Furthermore, national cohesion is not a passive state that simply exists; it is an active commitment that requires constant cultivation. As such, it demands that we reject the easy comfort of ethnic territorialization and embrace the harder work of building genuinely national institutions that serve all Kenyans.
Specifically, our education system, particularly our national schools, must remain spaces where children from every corner of Kenya learn together, study together, and build the relationships that will sustain our nation for generations to come.
In conclusion, the choice before us is clear: we can allow opportunistic politicians to instrumentalize education for ethnic mobilization, or we can recommit to the constitutional vision of an inclusive, merit-based system that serves all Kenyans. The stakes could not be higher, for what is at stake is not merely access to schools but the very idea of Kenya as a unified nation-state. Ultimately, our response to this moment will determine whether we advance toward that ideal or retreat into the dangerous politics of ethnic exclusion.
This is the Kenya our Constitution promises. This is the Kenya worth fighting for.
By Ibrahim Adan
Ibrahim Adan is an educationist specialising in governance and education policy.
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