ケニア西部の中等学校における質的改善過程に生じる相克

―学校および生徒の選択に着目して―

抄録

  Schooling has been rapidly expanding even in sub-Saharan African countries, with many studies now paying more attention to the issue of the quality of education. In Kenya, the demand for secondary education has been increasing along with the expansion of primary education. The net enrollment rate in secondary education increased by more than 20% within ten years and the gross enrollment rate reached 68% in 2012. Public secondary schools are not equal and can be divided mainly into three categories: national, county and sub-county schools, based on their administrative levels and merits. Sub-county schools, which are at the bottom level, have been recently mushrooming and have significantly contributed to increasing access to secondary education. Although the school fees of those sub-county schools are generally lower than that of other middle- or top-level schools, the quality of education, which is understood in many ways, provided in sub-county schools is generally regarded as low. Therefore, leavers from these schools often confront difficulties in proceeding to higher education, taking up decent jobs and escaping poverty.

  Quality improvement for enhancing equality and equity has been of particular importance to eliminate this reproduction of poverty. Equality in quality improvement is to ‘allocate’ the same quality education to all schools, and equity in quality improvement is to ‘distribute’ the necessary quality required for each school or student. The necessity of quality improvement for equality and equity has been discussed, however much research assumes that some intervention must be done for quality improvement by outsiders including donor agencies and the government. Moreover, these studies do not focus on quality improvement endeavors made by individual schools. Hence it is not clear how and why quality improvement is carried out and what the impact is on students’ learning because previous research rarely employs a case study method.

  The purpose of this study is to analyze the process of quality improvement by focusing on the decision of schools and students. It reveals why each school attempts to improve its quality and what the impact is on students of changing educational quality at schools by taking a look at the case of a sub-county school (hereafter referred to as School A). School A has recently made extra efforts to improve educational quality. Field study was conducted three times, for a total period of nine weeks, from 2014 till 2016 in Busia County located in western Kenya. Participant observations and non-structured interviews were employed to clarify the efforts and intentions of quality improvement at the school level and the impact of those efforts on students. Basic school data was collected from the other neighboring six secondary schools for comparison.

  This study revealed the following three aspects, which have occurred due to the particular efforts of quality improvement in the school:

  (1) The school used to set the lowest fees among the sub-county schools in the area. It significantly increased the amount of school fees in 2016 to improve educational quality by means of employing qualified teachers and equipping new facilities. The principal considered that it is necessary to improve the quality because they have observed a steady decrease in academic performance since 2013. In addition, three low-fee sub-county schools were newly established in the neighborhood between 2013 and 2015. The school needs to compete with other schools and quality improvement is utilized as a strategic means for the survival of the school.

  (2) These increased school fees put extra financial burden on students. The number of students dropped dramatically to 202 in 2016 from 335 in 2015, because the increase fees excluded students who could not afford to pay. Most were transferred (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)