Promoting values-based leadership and society through education in Kenya

President William Ruto has aptly described the Generation Z revolt as a turning point, a moment when significant change is taking place. The public debate in the wake of the Generation Z uprising is about competence, character and a values-based society. This requires serious reflection on the role of values-based education.

For a developing country like Kenya, education means three things.

First, a values-based education is a means or a path to an ethical goal. For Kenya, that ethical goal is the creation of a united, democratic, just, prosperous and truly free and sovereign nation. As the educationist Paulo Freire once asserted, “Education is freedom.” Knowledge acquired through learning – whether practical or theoretical – opens the golden door to freedom. A values-based education takes a people from darkness to light. Moreover, education is hailed as “the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balancing wheel of the social machinery.”

Yet access to quality education for all has been a challenge in Kenya, as elsewhere, for generations. At independence in 1963, there were initially only 151 secondary schools, most of them public, with a total enrollment of 30,120 students. To democratise access to education, communities raised money to establish Harambee schools. In recent times, Kenya has seen phenomenal growth in private schools or academies. Today, there are nearly 3,000 secondary schools in Kenya with a total enrollment of 620,000 students. Yet values-based education is becoming too much of a problem due to inadequate funding for education, teacher shortages and inadequate equipment and facilities.

Second, philosophically speaking, a values-based education is an end in itself—it is a true product. The ultimate product of a values-based education is a “noble citizen,” a person with character, knowledge, and skills that are useful to society and the world. Experience has shown that an education that focuses only on training the mind and does not equip the learner with morals ultimately creates a personality that is a threat to society. Simply put, education without values ​​creates a citizen who is a cunning devil! Conversely, a good values-based education produces a conscientious, responsible citizen who is easy to lead but difficult to direct, easy to govern but impossible to enslave. This seems to be the personality of the Generation Z revolt.

Finally, and relatedly, values-based education is a solution to the major problems facing a society. Nelson Mandela hailed values-based education as “the most powerful weapon with which you can change the world.” At Kenya’s independence, the founding fathers saw education as the most important weapon in the country’s war against the three enemies of its people: ignorance, poverty and disease. Future generations have viewed education as an investment in knowledge and skills that will pay off many times over.

But the chronic lack of jobs and opportunities does not pay off, making investment in education a “dead investment.” According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the number of unemployed Kenyans will rise to over 2.97 million by the end of 2022.

This means that Kenya’s youth bulge – the relatively large increase in the number of young people – is quickly turning from a blessing into a curse. With almost 80 percent of Kenyans under the age of 35, Kenya’s youth offer great economic and social opportunities.

Nevertheless, Kenya’s move towards values-based education has begun. In 2017, the country introduced its new competency-based curriculum (CBC) to replace the 8-4-4 education system. The new curriculum is designed to produce a holistic Kenyan personality that combines character, knowledge and skills in the digital age. The new ‘upright’ Kenyan will be digitally savvy, equipped with imagination, creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and imbued with the values ​​of citizenship, patriotism, love, responsibility, cooperation, respect, unity, peace and integrity.

However, the strong commercialisation and politicisation of education poses a serious obstacle to value-based education. In the 1980s and 1990s – rightly called the ‘lost decades’ – structural adjustment pressures from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pushed the Kenyan education system towards the market.

The political class’s efforts to avoid the negative consequences of dwindling access to affordable education have resulted in a top-heavy, wasteful and corruption-prone scholarship system. As of July 2024, the country has 54 parallel government-funded scholarship schemes, including Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) scholarships, 47 county government scholarships, National Government Affirmative Action Fund (NGAAF), Presidential Secondary School Bursary, Kenya Institute of Social Work and Community Development (KISWCD), Presidential Bursary Scheme for Orphans and Vulnerable Students and higher education funding.

As part of the ongoing reforms, the government should depoliticize education funding, immediately consolidate all scholarships into a single institution to fund free primary and secondary education, and provide scholarships and loans for college and university education, leaving scholarships to private foundations and charities. Abolishing scholarships would not only bring more sanity and predictability to education funding, but would also minimize corruption and undue politicization of education.

Professor Peter Kagwanja is the Executive Director of the Africa Policy Institute. This article is an extract from his remarks during the Murang’a South Education Day Forum entitled: “Towards Values-Based Holistic Education” held at Nginda Girls High School, Maragua on 12 July 2024.