Monica Kariuki wears many hats: she is a mother of two, a grandmother, a hairdresser, and a poultry farmer. She is also a student at the Nakuru West Subcounty Adult Learning Centre in Nakuru County, where she is preparing for her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations at the end of the year.
Before making what many would consider a brave decision to go back to school as an adult, Monica mainly focused on her hairdressing business.
Growing up, hairdressing was not her dream career.
“I got to Class 8 and passed my exams, but because of poverty, I could not continue learning. I started life, had children, and after so many years, I wanted to go back to school to be able to move on to whatever else I wanted to pursue. There was a time I wanted to travel abroad, but everywhere I went, they would ask for my academic certificates, and this motivated me to go back and sit for my KCSE exams to get that certificate,” Monica says.
Monica’s schoolmate Clare Arumba Mwale is a clerk at the Deputy County Commissioner’s office in Nakuru West Sub-county.
Clare sat her KCSE back in 2009 but did not like the grade she attained.
More than a decade later, she decided to go back to school to try for a better mark. She felt she had matured enough over the years to decide to re-sit the KCSE exam and enrolled at the learning centre in Nakuru West.
The centre at Nakuru is one of about 9,000 adult learning centres around Kenya under the Directorate of Adult and Continuing Education at the Ministry of Education. It was established in 1971, eight years before the government started the national literacy program, whose aim was to reduce adult illiteracy. The latest Economic Survey puts the number of adults in learning centres at 138,628 in 2022. Adult learning is also promoted by the Kenya Adult Learners’ Association, which works to promote community access to education, encompassing both basic and continuing education levels and incorporating formal and informal educational systems. As of 2021, Kenya’s adult literacy rate stood at 82.62 per cent, a one per cent increase since 2018.
While many adults go to school to acquire the basics of literacy, just the reading and writing, Clare and Monica are different in that they have greater ambitions.
The adult learning on offer at the centre in Nakuru West is different as it provides a dynamic and expedited approach to education, which is different from the typical four-year high school paradigm. This different approach focuses on efficiency and relevance, allowing learners to complete their education in just two years. The programme provides either a full-time or part-time schedule, depending on the learner’s schedule.
The full-time schedule was a good fit for Monica, and she has learnt to juggle the responsibilities that come with being an adult learner.
“I normally wake up very early at 4 a.m. to tend to my poultry for about an hour or 45 minutes. After that, I go back to the house to study a little, prepare myself and wake up my grandchild or my daughter, and then I start going to the centre,” Monica adds.
She hopes to pursue a career in nursing and knows that to achieve this, she has to make sacrifices in her life.
“Everything has its own challenges and costs. For me to be here, I had to leave my hairdressing job because it is a day job. I continued with poultry so that I could still go to school. There have been challenges because first, I had to put friendships aside, and I had little time with my family because I had to concentrate and study. I only have a few days because, unlike the normal high school, I only have two years,” she says.
Nakuru West was originally an agricultural area, and many parents did not see the essence of sending their children to school when they could help out on the farms, says Jacob De’ Kiage, the centre manager.
As the appetite for education has grown, the centre has provided many adults in the area with a second chance at education.
“At the centre, we provide basic literacy, post-literacy, a primary adult centre, and a secondary day centre. We also have computer training packages for school youth and adults who want to be digitally literate. Our target is out-of-school youths and adults who want to continue with their studies,” says Jacob.
The centre has four instructors employed by the government as well as part-time teachers who are helping at the primary level with basic literacy and post-literacy.
As part of the part-time learning, the school introduced online learning after it received computers from Safaricom Foundation’s Ndoto Zetu initiative. The online programme runs from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and caters for working adults or mothers with young children.
Clare took advantage of the part-time programme, but she had to make necessary arrangements at work in order to accommodate her studies.
“I spoke to my bosses and explained to them that I would be coming in to work at 4 p.m. when my classes would end. During the exam period, I’d take leave for a week to be able to do my exams. They did not have a problem with that because I would get the work done,” she says.
The school currently has a student population of 40, and Jacob is on a mission to attract as many adults to enroll as possible. He insists that the flexible learning schedule can accommodate all adults, where they can choose when to come and study.
“We have done a lot of marketing on the importance of continuing learning, depending on where one left off. We have collaborated with local churches, chiefs, and Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) around Nakuru West Sub-County to encourage as many youths as possible that have dropped out of school and adults to come and realise their full potential and ability,” he says.
