The halls of Kaliluni Primary School in southern Kenya, once bustling with hundreds of students, now sit empty, serving as nothing more than a grazing ground for livestock. This scene of decay is being repeated across the nation as more than 2,000 schools face permanent closure.
The culprit is a top-down, government-mandated education overhaul known as Competency-Based Education (CBE), which was forced upon the country in 2017 without the necessary infrastructure to support it.
By demanding that under-resourced rural schools suddenly provide science laboratories, specialized teachers, and advanced materials, the government effectively set these institutions up for failure.
Education Minister Julius Ogamba has now been forced to face the reality of this bureaucratic disaster, admitting that schools with fewer than 45 students are no longer viable.
While the government celebrates its 'milestone' of curriculum implementation, the reality on the ground is a collapse of rural education, with students forced to trek miles across rugged terrain to find schools that actually have the resources to function.
Parents are voting with their feet, pulling their children from these hollowed-out institutions in search of better opportunities, while experts warn that the government’s failure to plan has created a crisis of overcrowding in the schools that remain.
It is a classic case of government overreach: imposing an expensive, complex mandate on communities that lack the basic tools to execute it, ultimately leaving the most vulnerable behind.
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