ケニア初等学校生徒の進級構造

―留年と中途退学の実態―

抄録

Kenya has been categorized as one of the more advanced African nations in terms of primary school enrollment ratios. But these ratios have been declining since 1980, when the gross enrollment ratio was as high as 115 percent. Kenya's net ratio at present is estimated to be as low as 60 percent. In a situation in which the educational budget is not sufficient to accommodate the total school-aged population, it is crucial to reduce the numbers of repeaters and dropouts in order to make the education system more efficient. Grade repeating and dropping out are critical issues for developing countries like Kenya, and much research has been done on these topics. Not enough is known, however, to predict which specific interventions would reduce repetition and dropout rates. Probably, this is because little on-site research has been done to establish the repetition and dropout rates at the school level, and the results might differ somewhat from those of analysis based on statistical surveys at the national level.

Based on our understanding that it is essential to shed light on the grade transition of pupils at the micro level, we attempted to trace individual pupils over three years, conducting interviews with their teachers, the pupils themselves, and the pupils' parents. In collaboration with two schools different in size and circumstance in the Narok District, where the majority of the population are Maasai, we principally tried to examine the process of grade transition. The Narok District has not been successful at schooling children relative to the national standard of Kenya, and the people there are predominantly the pastoral tribe.

The major findings in this research were as follows. First, over thirty percent of pupils regularly repeat grades, and repeating has therefore become somewhat normal. This condition is much worse than what was expected. Second, there were relatively few dropout pupils, though the expectation was of many, and the majority of dropouts were girls in the higher grades whose attrition was the result of pregnancy or marriage. Third, the high rate of grade repetition was not directly linked to a poor learning environment; rather, it tended to be connected to the head teacher's attitude towards examination results in the final grade, based on which all schools are ranked in a league table.