Explain some of the critical challenges facing the ministry of education today relating to equity access,quality and relevance of education

Access and Equity.
Access and equity is hindered mainly through gender disparities and inadequate infrastructure. When it comes to gender disparity, the boy child seems more favoured compared to the counterpart girl child. The major stumbling blocks to girl’s participation in school include unfavourable cultural norms like FGM, poverty, distance to school, and gender bias. FGM makes girls quit school for early marriage. Some girls are discouraged from treking to school due to long distance especially in North Eastern parts of Kenya.
Inadequate infrastructure may cover inadequate water, poor health services, poor sanitation, muddy and dusty roads and inadequate classrooms. Whenever all these critical conditions are available, the access of education is affected negatively since children will either not go to school as a result of inadequate water, not access a textbook due to their limited number, or not concentrate in class due to high population of students.

Quality of Education.
The main determinant factors towards downgrading education quality in Kenya is inadequate supply of teachers, inadequate resources and student absenteeism. There are cases of higher national and regional disparities in the pupil to teacher ratio from the recommended 40:1. Besides that, most teachers are not qualified, especially those employed by the board of school.
Inadequate resources like stationery affects the quality of education negatively. This is the main problem in Kenya since the enrollment rate of students as a result of free primary education is very high. This makes the necessary resources for learning inadequate. Textbooks and desks are shared among pupils in most schools. The inadequacy of vital resources forces the government to depend on donations and grants from developed countries to maintain and upload the quality of education.
Students’ absenteeism derails education quality too. Whenever students are not in school, they have missed whatever was taught on that day. Absenteeism might be caused by essential resources for pupils like sanitary towels, stigma as a result of HIV/AIDS, inability to raise the required financial requirements in school, and expulsion/suspension from school as a result of moral misconduct.


Relevance of Education.
The 8.4.4 system is more of result-oriented than skills-oriented. The belief that getting better grades is the way to success continues to affect our society. The students who fail are left to sort themselves after all the years of wastage in school. There should be amendments to make our education system skills-oriented for that is the only way students will become of service to the society in particular and nation at large.

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Abced answered the question on October 1, 2019 at 12:22