EDUCATION AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
In many countries education has provided one dependable leverage for national development. For example in Kenya, ignorance is one of the declared national scourges which must be fought against along with poverty and disease. The ruling party in its KANU Manifesto has ever since independence, in 1963, urged both indi-viduals and groups through the Harambee movement of self-help and self-reliance, to build and maintain numerous nursery schools, secondary schools,village polytechnics and institutes of tech-nology across the length and breadth of the country (KANU, 1983: 9). All these self-help efforts in education have been prompted by the government's clear understanding that education plays a pivotal and catalytic role in enhancing national development. Uppermost in the government's thinking is that the nation's ability to foster overall social, economic and political develop-ment lies in the quality and quantity of its literate and nume-rate population. The Kenya population therefore, needs to be educated
for its full enjoyment of life on the social front; to meet the nation's manpower requirements on the economic front; and, to create a solid sense of national unity on the political front.
In this regard, education and training have continued to be given a very high priority in the country's National Development Plans in order to educate and prepare enough people to fill middle and high level positions in the private and public sectors of the economy. The need to Kenyanize the private and public sectors of the economy has called upon the government to educate and equip the required personnel with the desired knowledge, skills and attitudes. The production of sufficient numbers of secondary and university graduates with the required skills, knowledge and expertise for filling the middle and high level positions to prop the modern dynamic economy remains a challenge to educational planners in Kenya (Tostensen and Scott, 1987: 74 - 75).
Indeed, in consideration and in pursuit of the conviction that a satisfactory general level of education is a necessary pre-condition for growth and human well-being, the government has attempted with the 8-4-4 System of Education: 8 years primary, 4 years secondary and 4 years university, to broaden the educa-tional system so as to create opportunities for various speciali-zed training to prepare the youth for all types of tasks (Kenya, 1984: v - vi). Tremendous expansions, given the nation's limited financial resources, have also, been undertaken at the primary, secondary and university levels of the educational system. Thus, while in 1963 there were 6,058 primary schools with an enrolment of 891,553, in 1980 there were 10,268 primary schools with an enrolment of 3,931,500. Also, while in 1963 there were 150 seco-ndary schools with an enrolment of 28,764, in 1980 there were 1,626 with an enrolment of 410,026. Finally, while in 1963 the University College, Nairobi had a student enrolment of 571, by 1980 i
t was a fully-fledged university with a student population of 6,870. In the meantime, the cost of education to the National Exchequer has been rocketing, from K£6,961,000 in 1963 to K£122,583,000 in 1980 (Kenya, 1981; 1982).
DISTANCE EDUCATION
By 1980 the Ministry of Education was taking the lion's share of the National budget, at 34.9% of the total recurrent expenditure. Cost-effective educational alternatives needed to be either sought, or streamlined. One such alternative was to be found in distance education, where Kenya's experience dates back to 1967. In that year the government established the Correspondence Course Unit (CCU) within the Institute of Adult Studies of the University of Nairobi. In 1963 the University of Nairobi housed the CCU in the newly absorbed buildings of the Collge (sic) of Social Studies at Kikuyu, twenty kilometres from the main university campus.
To initiate the project, the Government of Kenya, received finan-cial assistance from USAID. The CCU immediately embarked on adult courses, whose main beneficiaries, 90% of them were primary school teachers in search of higher teaching qualifications. Others who benefited were clerks, farmers, housewives, members of the Kenyan Armed Forces, the Police and Co-operative staff throughout the country (Kinyanjui, 1981: 83).
In 1969 CCU together with the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) undertook to run a joint programme for untrained primary school teachers. The programme was aimed at improving the teaching effectiveness of those who had been recruited as untrained tea-chers after completing 4, or 6 years of secondary school. This training was provided through a combination of correspondence courses, radio programmes and face to face instruction during short residential courses when the would-be teachers were on their school holidays. The untrained teachers prepared and sat for the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) examinations in order to be awarded their teaching certificates. By the 1987 count 15,000 untrained primary school teachers had successfully finished the relevant courses to be awarded their professional teaching certificates (A correspondent, 1987: 13). Considering that 30% of the 140,000 primary school teachers in Kenya are unqualified, the importance and signficance of the step taken will be easily rea
lized.
To-date CCU, since renamed the School of Distance Studies (SDS) has a grand total of 9,200 students enrolled in its 3 year Foundation Course in Adult Education for those to teach adults; 4,2000 students in its 3-year In-service course for untrained teachers for those teaching in primary schools; and 2,000 adult students undertaking other general and professional continuing education courses for those who are not in the teaching profe-ssion (Gatere, 1986: 6). These courses include some in book-keeping, commercial arithmetic, accountancy and other vocational studies. Over the years, the SDS learning media and the methods of students' assessment have been boosted to include study guides, textbooks, continuous assessment, teaching practice, with support services from administrative and supervisory personnel in govern-ment centres in the country (A Correspondent, 1987: 13 - 14).
Thus, from its very meagre beginnings the Correspondence Course Unit has risen to become College of Adult and Distance Educa-tion (CADE) comprising an Institute of Extra Mural Studies, an Institute of Adult Studies, a School of Distance Studies and a Faculty of External Degree Studies, whose activities are super-vised and co-ordinated at the Kikuyu Campus of the University of Nairobi. All these departments of CADE have as their primary objective to educate the large majority of adults who were denied higher education opportunities during the colonial cir-cumstances. The CADE courses are tailored to the educational needs of adults, being applicable to their daily lives. Accor-dingly, the stated objectives of CADE are helping create a better understanding between the highly educated minority and the majority of the people; helping individuals raise their levels of academic standing; helping create an informed public opinion; helping enrich the cultural life of the rural areas; and engaging in research on all
aspects of adult education and training (University of Nairobi, 1985: 98).
Evidently, these are ambitious objectives requiring a highly efficient system of selection, planning, development and prepa-ration, together with a well-organized operation network and the necessary machinery to ensure that those aims are attained. Large amounts of teaching materials, and equipment for printing, binding, radio recording and production studio are needed in order to handle the demands of distance education placed upon CADE effectively. Using what has been available the performance of SDS students in national examinations has been comparable to, if not better than that of school candidates sitting the same examinations. However, there has been 15% to 25% drop-out rate of SDS students. To arrest this drop-out trend the college has undertaken evaluation studies and research, resulting in the much needed feedback from its students (Kinyanjui 1981: 86).
EXTERNAL DEGREE PROGRAMME
Nevertheless, the SDS experience has gone a long way to show that once the operation machinery of distance education has been esta-blished it can be a cheap and cost-effective means towards satisfying the urgent academic and professional needs of a deve-loping country like Kenya. Consequently, with the experience gained from the SDS catering for students training to become primary, secondary and higher school teachers, together with vocational students, CADE has finally, ventured into offering undergraduate degree courses. The Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) Arts degree course launched in 1986, with some British assistance in terms of personnel training, hopes to gain from the experience of the SDS using a combination of different media: correspondence materials, radio and short residential sessions, to produce credible graduates, but at a distance (Omari, 1986:3). This is indeed, a milestone towards meeting the national middle and high level manpower needs of the country even though initially, the external
degree programme will address itself to the urgent need for graduate teachers to man the country's spiralling number of secondary schools.
Out of the 19,368 teachers working in Kenya's secondary schools only just over 5,000 are graduates and 5,706 more are non-graduate, but otherwise qualified teachers. The balance of 8,648 is made up of 'A' level school leavers many of whom satisfy the minimum university entrance requirements, but cannot immediately find places in any of our institutions. When the university initiated the external degree programme and invited applications over 3,000 applicants vied for the 600 places available (A Correspondent, 1986:14). The B.Ed. arts degree started off with Education, Mathematics, Geography, Economics, Business Education, History, Religious Studies and Philosophy, English, Literature and Kiswahili. To complete the implementation of the B.Ed. Arts programme special subjects like Home Science, Music, Physical Education and Fine Art will soon be offered. Over the next 4 years B.Ed. Science, Legal Studies, and Business Studies will be introduced. What is more, while it costs the government K£6,000 over a
3 year period to produce 1 B.Ed. graduate, it costs K£850 over a 6 year period to produce a comparable graduate through the external degree programme (Education Correspondent, 1986:14). This will therefore, be an enormous saving while also being a quali-tative and quantitative improvement of secondary education through-out the Country.
CONCLUSION
The Kenyan distance education activities have over the last 2 decades been extended to meet the needs of elementary and secondary schooling and even those of university education. This has been a tangible and remarkable achievement in expanding educational opportunities within the Third World. In particular the inauguration of the external degree programme by CADE will be the fulfilment of dreams for the many qualified candidates who had otherwise given up hope for continued university education. Yet this is only a begin-ning, but a promising one that augurs well for a fuller utiliza-tion of the enormous potential of distance education at university level in Kenya.
REFERENCES
A Correspondent, "Distance education in Kenya", The Standard, Nairobi, July 20, 1987.
Education Correspondent, "Studying at Home to Get That Degree", Daily Nation, Nairobi, September 18, 1985.
Gatere, N., "The School Which Teachers Through Radio", The Anvil, Nairobi, December 3, 1986.
KANU, Kanu Manifesto, (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1983).
KANU, Kanu Manifesto, (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1983).
Kenya, University Education in Kenva: The First Report of the 1980-1983 University Grants Committee, (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1981).
, Kenya: Country Paper, Conference of Ministers of Education and those Responsible for Economic Planning in Member States of Africa Held in Harare, Zimbabwe, 28th June - 3rd July, 1982.
, 8-4-4 System of Education, (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1984).
Kinyanjui, P. E., "Kenya's Experience in Distance Teaching", Adult Education and Development, (March, 1981) 16, 83 - 89.
Muller, J., "Inservice Training by Correspondence", Development and Cooperation (1987) 3, 29 - 30.
Omari, E., "Mbithi Says Varsity Will Produce Credible Graduates" The Kenya Times, Nairobi September 19, 1986.
Tostensen, A. and Scott, J. G., Kenya: Country Study and Norwegian Aid Review, (Bergen, Norway: The Chr. Michelsen Institute, 1987).
University of Nairobi, University of Nairobi Calendar 1984-1985, (Nairobi: University of Nairobi, 1984).
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