Abstract:
Over the years, the provision of educational opportunities has been identified as an important ingredient for countries to attain accelerated economic growth, low crime rates, national unity and political stability. In the Kenyan context, aid to education has played an important role in the country’s education sector since the county’s independence. Given the importance of the provision of education opportunities to countries development, this paper this paper provides a critical review of the role of ODA in increasing access to basic education in Kenya. Towards carrying out this review, the study outlines three key objectives. The first is to identify the various ways Official Development Assistance has been used to support basic education. The second is to investigate how successful Official Development Assistance has been in supporting basic education in Kenya. The third objective is to establish the extent to which Official Development Assistance has influenced decision making in the Kenyan education Sector. The study uses the dependency theory, and the big push theory as analytical tools. The study establishes that there are two main avenues through which ODA has been used to support basic education in Kenya. The first is project based support, which involves the provision of funds to meet a specific cost such as the construction of schools, or the provision of textbooks over a specified period of time. The second is through programme based support, which involves the provision of funds by donors to support the Governments sector wide approach in the education sector. A good example of this is the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP), which brought together over 20 bilateral and multilateral agencies, working in tandem with the Kenyan government, with the aim of expanding and improving access to basic education in the country. These two approaches have their own strengths and weaknesses, which are also outlined in the study. The study also finds, that though ODA funds do not make up a large part of the Kenya’s education budget, these funds have, nonetheless played a crucial role in expanding access to basic education in Kenya. This can be observed most clearly in the in the increased enrolment numbers at the basic education level following the injection of ODA monies to support free primary education in 2003. Additionally, this can also be seen in the use of ODA funds to tackle some of the non-fee barriers to education, while also driving important research into how access to basic education can be achieved more effectively and efficiently. As regards the influence of ODA funds on decision making in the basic education sector, the study finds, that while the Global education agenda does have some influence on the Kenyan Government’s education sector priorities, the Government’s relationship with donors has moved beyond mere policy prescription, and are instead more focussed on implementation. The final analysis reveals that ODA has played an important role in supporting basic education in Kenya, particularly, with regards to expanding access to basic education in Kenya. This has been done either through eliminating or reducing the cost of school attendance, or in tackling the wide range of non - fee related barriers such as the provision of physical infrastructure, supporting orphaned children, and carrying out research to improve both access to, and the quality of, education provided. The caveat here, is that despite these positive contributions, problems relating to the quality of education provided persist, and aid monies received for Kenya’s basic education sector haven’t been used as efficiently as they should have. This is largely as a result of misappropriation of funds, or a failure to consider the sometimes unique educational needs of different regions of the country. ODA funds have the potential to have an even bigger impact on initiatives to expand access to basic education, but only if these funds are used efficiently, and a greater emphasis is placed on improving the quality of education provided, instead of simply focusing on increasing the number of children receiving basic education.