I think 2 factors are to blame. One is the word "free". I think it is a big mistake to tell the whole country that they have a right to " free" anything. Whether that is education or healthcare. You create entitlement without responsibility. You create a very hostile environment for the providers of these services, teachers, doctors, nurses because you are now telling the public that these people are their slaves and they treat them as such.

Two was the banning of corporal punishment. There is nothing more discouraging than taking away a teacher's instrument of control.

Very true. Going to a public school now is like going to Kenyatta hospital.

Seems the parents at the collapsed school have no faith in public schools. They have vowed not to take their kids to public schools as suggested by govt.

In my case, I went to a public primary school huko rural area and huko machinani public schools seem to be still doing well unlike in urban areas.

https://www.the-star.co....er-killer-school-owner/

It is during Kibaki era that private schools grew most and public schools declined most.

On this, Jubilee are just morticians

Interesting topic indeed.
Though I think its not all dark. There are rays of light/ hope.

We can trace the generational shifts through the years and predict what will happen next.

Those who went through primary school in '60s, '70s and '80s came from families of generally low means; but were themselves lucky to be at the hockey stick curve of economic growth upon graduating (liberalization, democracy, population consolidation, globalization). They fear(ed) poverty so much, and would do anything to:
a) never go back to poverty: legal or illegal, moral or immoral. Normalization and institutionalization of corruption happened when they took over reigns of power and policy b) wants nothing to do with poverty and its devices - hence they abandoned the traditional foods such as arrowroots, cassava, millet etc in favor of what they perceived as rich man's food - sugar, bleached flour, sausages etc and c) they have an insatiable hunger for land which was a major factor of production and status symbol those days.

We are at the onset of the next generational cycle...kids who went to school in the '80s, '90s and '00s grew up in plenty and pamper, no hunger, wore shoes to (increasingly private) school, were totally shielded from poverty, parents took them to makuti pubs and are technology natives.
Those kids are already taking very extreme formations; 'Unicorns' are investing in intellectual property not land, and competing on the fast lane. The laggards are betting, borrowing, drinking and 420-ing their way to oblivion. Meanwhile their ageing parents are exposed to lifestyle epidemics and dwindling incomes as their modus operandi of money at all costs and real estate oriented investments become less fashionable.

As an 80's outlier - a nigger they got out of ghetto but the ghetto never got out of the nigger, I can see a convergence of the best of our days and the best of modern times.
I have a character in the so-called grade 3 who has become noticeably experimental, inquisitive and open-minded. As his class 7 bro is buried in homework, the character is raiding birds nests, destroying my laptop, and burrowing his way out of chores in the garden.

That is how the formative years of 8.4.4 looked like - no burden of reading for exams. Those 'art and crafts home science and music, metalwork, woodwork...' produced in us jacks of all economic situations and masters of survival.

There will be natural deselection of the weak, while those to whom the future belongs will tap into the emerging best and next educational practices such as MOOC (massive online open courses); generic private schools will diminish in stature and class, possibly to be replaced by specialized post grade 6 schools. Private phenomena is haeded to that grade 7-9 critical space.

As for the comment that primary school networks matter later in life, I must have come from Mars this morning...not in a competitive, results-oriented and knowledge-centric world where we are. I propose that the ability to see around the corner and to see the next big thing in the quinary and quarternaly industries will be the real force multipliers.

Very interesting topic. Kenya is the king of knee jerk reactions. I think the public education system was killed deliberately. Now i see kids waking up at 5 am in order to get to the school bus on time, they always have assignments to do including during holidays etc. While I accept that times have changed, I remember in our time, we didn't do all this rubbish and we turned out just fine.

This is the same greed which infiltrated institutions of higher education. As long as you can afford it, you can buy it.

Juzi,I visited Nakuru town. Those old estates like Langalanga & Shabab still look impressive compared to the disorder in Nairobi. I saw wide roads newly tarmacked by the county govt with cycling paths and deep drainage

People there surely have a better quality of life than Nairobians

I hear new estates huko are as disorderly as Ruaka is growing to be. Coz Ruaka will decay at some point to become a Githurai