More About Kwamboo Primary School
Just like Kyalilini primary school, Kwamboo Primary School is a rural institution whose conditions are not different from the rest of the schools in rural Kenya. The communities erect the structures for students to go through pre-primary education to high school. The procedure is mostly accomplished via fundraisers, which we call Harambee and partly CDF (funds from the local parliamentary offices).
The government provides teachers, and currently, as the new curriculum is adopted countrywide, the government has been sending a few textbooks for students from grades 1-3 and 7-8 to share.
Kwamboo primary school has over 350 students ranging from PP1- class 8. Pre-education has two levels, (PP1 and PP2), and the primary school, grade 1 to grade 8. On average, each classroom has about 30-45 students all in one stream, and all students are aged between four and 15 years. Study materials are available for three principal subjects, English, Kiswahili, and Mathematics. The community supporting Kwa-Mboo Primary school has also established a secondary school to allow the majority, if not all, of the students, completing grade eight at the primary school, access secondary education right away. Normally, students scoring less than 250 marks in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) held annually countrywide, miss out on the opportunities to join Secondary schools. So they are forced to either drop out and start working, get married, or wait for a couple of years to join tertiary and vocational colleges if opportunities open up. The performance in rural schools is such that almost 20 out of 40 students sitting for KCPE could score less than 250 marks. Without the nearby secondary schools, the community risk having more than 50% of students in each age group, losing the opportunity for a bright future.
Students in both Kyalilini and Kwa-Mboo primary share textbooks, one book per three to five students depending on the subject and number of students in the classroom. The most affected are students in grades four and six, as the government has neglected their needs for decades. In addition to course books, rural schools are in dire need of dictionaries, Kamusi, Revision material, storybooks, and encyclopedias.