The Relationship between Good Schools and Wealthy Neighborhoods
If you are keen enough you would notice that most good schools are located in wealthy neighborhoods. This question must have come to your mind, ‘Why so?’
Babra Adhiambo
This article will provide you with possible reasons why most good schools are located in wealthy neighborhoods and the disadvantaged schools are situated in equally disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Founders
Quite a number of founders of these schools, for example, Brookhouse International School, have their founders hailing from other countries, (not Kenyan national).
The school was founded by Piyush Melnta, Victoria Bank (UK), and PE firm of AfricInvset.In 2015 they later sold the school to a UK firm.
The schools' founders dwell in wealthy neighborhoods.
Nationality
If you take a look at Braeburn School, for instance, you will find that most of its students are interracial. That is 15-20 percent of the total student population are British while about 25 percent are Kenyan Nationals.
The schools offer British Curriculum-IGSE, therefore making it easier for students of different Nationalities to cope with their education without the struggle of adapting to the new curriculum.
Ambassadors from the international community, high-net-worth individuals like politicians and wealthy business owners often hail in areas of Nairobi’s Muthaiga, Karen and Runda Estates. Therefore they may opt to take their children to these schools.
Ability to Pay
Since most parents of these students have high social status. Most will go for high-quality schools for their children since they are able to pay huge amounts of tuition fees. Most of these schools have fees ranging from as low as 220,000 to about 1M for every three terms, depending on the grade of the student and whether they are boarding or not.
Conducive Environment
These neighbourhoods come with beauty, calmness and peace. This is because primarily they are near forests and good old trees that offer privacy and lush landscape making it conducive for the students to have peaceful lessons. For security reasons, other parents would also prefer taking their children around areas where they can easily be dropped and picked.
Why underdeveloped schools are in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods.
Limited Resources
The majority of the students who attend less developed schools reside in poor neighborhoods /slums or marginalized communities such as West Pokot and lack both Economic and social capital resources.
They would therefore have limited access to educational resources like textbooks and revision materials, and a hard time attracting the best teachers, it, therefore, means that they would work harder to perform highly in their education.
Economic segregation in schools poses intricate and major barriers to achieve educational equality. Since housing segregation has already created isolation among communities as most people would attend their neighborhood schools.
Therefore to achieve major improvements in the education sector, we will need to go back and think of residential segregation between different classes in the society and how to increase the economic equality between them.
The Kenyan Government should not stop at providing free education to students but also look at social factors surrounding matters of education like poor roads.
For instance, a case of Magdalene Kimani, a principal at Sosiana High school in Nark County, had to endure a 20 kilometers walk each day to deliver KCSE examinations to her students. This was partly because of the impassible road that leads to the school.
The local government and local business owners should work towards improving the standards of such schools.
