Emerging Inequality in the Process of Educational Expansion in Rural Kenya: Impact of the Community on Secondary School Management

Abstract

Kenya is one of the fastest countries to expand educational opportunities in Africa. Secondary schools are not equal, so that better education usually correlates to a higher school fee. Although previous studies have explained the reasons for the decreasing quality of education and the impact of that on causing inequality, it is also important to focus on the reasons for noticeable improvement in the quality of education. The objective of this study is to clarify the structure that causes inequality by revealing the self-sustaining practices for school development.

Data was collected through fieldwork for a month in May 2017 in Busia county. The major participants were three public schools which were established in the same year. Semi-structured interviews and participant observation were employed in the schools and in each community to clarify the efforts made towards school development and the roles played by the communities in those efforts. Collected data suggests the correlation between the number of students and their mean scores act as key factors in school development. This correlation was achieved by community characteristics. If a school was blessed with a better community, it could easily increase the number of students and its mean score. If not, a school would be trapped in a management crisis due to both a lack of students and a lower mean score.

Schools which originally depended on the geographic community presently depend on the educational community as well for their development. Educational communities in popular schools and unpopular schools are constructed by respectively positive and negative schooling decisions. Hence, a school in a poorer geographic community also suffers from the lack of a positive contribution by the educational community. That is why, it can be observed that the cause of inequality is that vulnerable students in unpopular schools are rarely blessed with resources from both the geographic and educational communities.