schools

In Kenya, children stay in primary schools (like our grade and middle schools) until they are 13 or 14. Then they take a national exam, the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education, which tells them whether they should go to secondary (high) school or to vocational training. High school takes four years, and then students take the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). If they get a B+ or above in their KCSE, which is hard to do, they get a guaranteed place at college.

Primary schools are free, but high school costs a lot of money (about $400 a year, or nine months’ salary). Because many families in Kenya are so poor, four in ten children drop out of school before they reach high school and work to support their families. Girls often get married very young, at the age of 12-14, to reduce the burden on their parents. Life for these families is very hard, and there is often not enough to eat. One in eight Kenyans dies before the age of eight, of diseases that we hardly see here in the United States, because there is not enough money for good medical care. About 30,000 children are living homeless on the streets of Nairobi.

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