Access to Education - RMF Global

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Access to Education

2020 showed how fragile global systems providing access to education for children are and how quickly progress that has been made in the recent past can experience significant setbacks.

According to UNESCO, the education of 1.7 billion children in 188 countries was heavily disrupted in 2020. Education continued to be disrupted for millions of children into 2021 and beyond, and a large percentage of children affected by this disruption will never have the opportunity to go back to school.

In Baringo County, as in many other counties around the world in 2020, children had to stay out of school for more than a year, with very limited options to continue their learning and education.

Baringo County in Rift Valley is one of Kenya’s 47 counties and has a total population of over 800,000 people, with 320,000 between the ages of 3–17; the population is expected to grow by more than 120,000 people by 2030. Baringo County is among the marginalized counties in Kenya with a poverty incidence of 52.2% against 45.2% nationally, and a dependency ratio of 107.2. 21,541 children of primary school age, and 55% of secondary school age youth in the county are out of school. 16% of the population has a secondary level of education or above, 48% have primary education, 36% of the population has no formal education.

Poverty Incidence

52.2%

Dependency Ratio

100%

Youth out of School

55%

Population with no formal education

36%

RMF Global, in partnership with RME, its social enterprise arm, has an established IT hub in Kenya, including an existing online platform (anYmo), and, through its Kenyan team, a very solid and respected community network in remote areas of the country. Invited by the community and its leadership, we established a pilot program for online access to education in Baringo County.

Talai Primary School serves as the program hub. It is a public primary school in Baringo County, Rift Valley. The school is strategically located in Kabarnet, connecting an entire remote area to online access. Talai Primary School has 430+ students and works in partnership with Talai Secondary School (600+ students).

Our programs take into account the remoteness of the area, often only intermittently available network access, frequent electricity challenges, and several other factors common for remote and underserved regions.

Pilot Hub Setup

Students at Talai Primary School

Classroom Setup for Online Learning

In parallel, we have successfully created, established, and completed highly effective digital computer trainings for both primary and secondary school teachers. Some of these teachers have been in their profession for decades and our trainings provide a powerful step to overcome hesitancy and fear of the unknown, and to tackle the future of education.

Based on the effectiveness and impact of our programs, Baringo County’s leadership has requested us to scale and implement our trainings and hubs in partnership with the Ministry of Education. This would benefit over 180,000 students who enroll in both public primary and secondary schools in Baringo County as per the Basic Educational Statistical Booklet (Ministry of Education).