Towards Achieving Quality Education in Kenya: Safeguarding Sustainable Free Day Secondary Education

Abstract

The Free Day Secondary Education (FDSE) was envisioned to make education in secondary schools more inexpensive and to enhance the success of students academically. These were to be attained via the reduction of user fees, textbooks provision, and other learning resources. However, stakeholders in this education sector are confronted with several problems. Many parents claim that FDSE is free, and this is probably going to influence their gathering of the other costs of education. It is against this background that the research sought to determine the effect of maximizing FDSE on the education quality in Kenya. The FDSE funds adequacy is vital in determining human capital quality available in Government free day secondary schools. Insufficiency of funds from the Free Day Secondary Education program conceded human capital quality. It is because the Free Day Secondary Education program failed to offer employment of human capital to manage the resultant enrolment increase and to provide capacity building of the present human capital to handle the changes evolving with the launch of the Free Day Secondary Education program. The rise of workload for the support staff and teachers also lessened the quality of personalized teaching they are supposed to provide to learners. However, due to the delay of FDSE funds' disbursement, the acquisition, motivation, and human capital sustenance were negatively impacted as the funds were not reliable. It implies that FDSE funds sufficiency significantly influences the human capital sufficiency available in Government free day secondary schools. Hence, free day secondary education impacts the human capital adequacy to a great extent in government day secondary schools. The Government should increase funds for FDSE allocated to government day secondary schools as the study revealed that they were not adequate to enhance full students' participation in government day secondary schools. This study recommends that there is need to put in place appropriate measures to ensure that the required facilities are put in place to support the entire FDSE program.

Keywords: Free Day Secondary Education, Quality, Safeguarding, Sustainable, Kenya

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-33-09

Publication date: November 30^th 2020