Non-formal schools based in informal settlements should be equipped to provide basic technical and vocational skills to learners patronizing them, an educationist has suggested.
Former Policy Director at the Ministry of Education Mr. Onesmus Kiminza says instead of closing the non-formal schools, they could be equipped to provide basic technical skills to the, often, children learners from poor families.
The educationist, who played a role in the creation regulations to govern the institutions under the Alternative Provision of Basic Education and Training (APBET), said learners in the schools should be assisted to acquire technical skills.
This comes in the wake of campaigns by legislators demanding that the institutions, hugely bereft of facilities and teachers, be merged or closed all together. The lawmakers said that the non-formal schools compromise educational standards while putting the lives and health of pupils, majority of them children, at risk.
The MPs, led by Dagoretti North representative Beatrice Elachi after touring various non-formal schools in her constituency, expressed shock at the poor standards the learners and teachers – majority of them unqualified – operated.
Kiminza however argues that the best way out is to have the schools offer not just literary and numeracy but also technical skills to learners and residents.
He insists that if the children from such schools dropped after gaining some technical and vocational skills, they will at least have a way to earn a living.
Controversy has been growing over non-formal schools across the country and especially in slums where private nursery schools operate without regulations and sometimes host baby care units which cater for babies under unhealthy structures and conditions.
“These informal schools are scattered all over the informal settlements, most are makeshift because they are made of iron sheets and apart from being crowded and unhealthy, some have between 50 to 70 learners,” said Elachi.
According to the legislator, continued operation of the schools was bound to compromise the success of the recently introduced Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) whose teaching she described as hands on hence the need to combine the schools for better pupil populations.
Although the schools have been receiving some support from various quarters including the government, the MP said she would only support institutions with a population of at least 200 learners, a move that could disadvantage the schools.
“How can we support a school in makeshift iron sheet structures which the managers term as a classroom, how will the CDF even support such an institution?” she wondered.
Despite the opposition of these institutions, their haphazard management seems to emanate from the outright failure by the Ministry of Education to enforce existing guidelines enacted in 2021 regarding such schools.
Kiminza however clarifies that the initial non-formal schools played an important role in assisting children from poor backgrounds gain both academic and functional education in the schools launched by well-wishers.
“The non-formal schools offered regular and functional education programmes for children under difficult circumstances who first of all lacked time to attend school,” he says, adding that most learners were mature people who could be equipped with technical skills to start earning from work because they knew what they wanted.
The expert also argues against abrupt closure of the schools based on their student population noting that the government’s legal definition of a school in the Basic Education Act is; ‘where children assemble to receive instruction’.
He adds that because the instructions must be guided by policy, even when 50 children assemble in a non-formal set up and are following a structured curriculum, that should accepted as a school.
By Robert Nyagah
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