We are stuck. We need to admit before seeking remedial measures. The education system in Kenya is groping in the dark due to lack of a singular vision for the sector. We are engaging in a lot of motion but no movement and we have been lying to ourselves as a nation that this is good enough. We compare ourselves to the region and lie that we are ahead of our compatriots.

Our education sector compass is broken. Since independence; we seem to have tried so many concoctions of things that promised quick remedy and eventually never worked but we seem still disinterested in stopping to assess what the real problem is. We have juggled by increasing investment in the sector since independence but money does not seem to fix the problem.

VISION

Expanding access and opening up more spaces for learners has not helped either. Our harambee spirit and CDF improvement of infrastructure and the latest facade of quality is yielding no result.

What lacks however in the singular national vision is an agreement on what our national education system should look like. Every person given an opportunity to make an investment decision deals with the problem in their locker in a silo approach, as the start and destination of their decision making for investment.

Out of our disjointed initiatives, we are now presiding over a broken system and killing the dreams of our children one day after the other as we sink more money into a bottomless pit. Our national psyche is not directed at making the education sector work. We lack the requisite national focus and willingness to make it succeed. We are a country of quick-patchy-fixes and we get excited and enthralled by the adrenalin rushes that take us on a fake ‘high’.