Bring back golden age of public primary school system
Opinion
By
Kennedy Buhere
| Oct 24, 2025
Grade 9 students during a lesson at Ronald Ngala Primary School in Mombasa County, on January 13, 2025. [Omondi Onyango, Standard]
For many years, learners in rural schools received quality educational experience, just like their counterparts in urban areas.
Then, there were strong management, supervision and inspection structures of delivery of education across the country. We had offices of Zonal Inspectors of Schools and Teachers’ Advisory Centres, staffed with officers who inspected, supervised and provided professional services to teachers. The office, under an Assistant Education Officer, provided in-service training on content knowledge after assessing the unique needs of teachers in a given area.
Education Ministry officials, working in collaboration with the TSC, enforced policies, rules and regulations to ensure schools implemented the curriculum. The control included strict administration of examinations at the end of each school year. Whatever infractions there were over these were dealt with ruthlessly.
In 2003, the government introduced Free Primary Education which led to massive enrollment of learners into public primary schools. The development was associated with the emergence of the private primary school system. Middle class parents enrolled their children into these schools which were mainly in urban or peri-urban areas. Experts on education attribute the comparatively poor performance of public primary schools in KCPE to the emergence of the private primary school system.
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Proportionally, most learners who score 380 marks out of the maximum 500 are from private primary schools. In the absence of affirmative action, private schools took more than 70 per cent of Form One slots in national and provincial schools. It was this imbalance in performance in KCPE that led to the introduction of affirmative action in the selection of pupils joining Form One.
However, the emergence of the private school system shouldn’t have affected the supervision, inspection and control of delivery of education services to learners in basic education institutions. On the contrary, the government should have strengthened all the control factors responsible for access to equitable quality education to all children, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds.
In the old days, District Education Offices had an administrative wing under a District Education Officer and a School Inspectorate wing headed by an Inspector of Schools. Under the school inspectorate wing, there were inspectors specialised in subjects who paid supervisory visits to improve the quality of teaching in schools in their subjects of specialisation. They also helped conduct in-service training for teachers in content and pedagogy.
A freeze in employment has seen education officers retire without replacement. There are more schools than we had in 2003.
The staff is not adequate to inspect and supervise the schools. Inspectors should conduct in-service training in weak or difficult subject areas based on assessment of teaching and learning. They should also inspect, educate and advise teachers on the best implementation of school development plans.
Closing the achievement gap between rural and urban schools requires that the government ensures the rigour underlying each stage is attained. It requires utmost vigilance at each stage.
Kennedy Buhere, Communication Specialist