As someone who grew up in the leafy suburbs, I saw kids around me who attended the expensive schools of Kenya like ISK and RVA of which school fees were even 1m per term. Many people believe this to be the pinnacle of learning in Kenya, but I beg to differ. The problem is what people imagine these schools to be, vs what they actually are.
A school is only as good as its students. Intelligence is highly genetic, with most people having a defined range of grades that they are capable of. In developed countries, you have meritocracies where the richest people also tend to be intelligent, so most of the kids in prestigious schools have inherited some smartness from their parents. Now they are in an environment where they can push each other. Huku Kenya, we don’t have a meritocracy. Our richest people are mostly buffoons who simply got lucky for example when their friend entered government and gave them some tenders to enrich themselves. The children of these buffoons inherit the same buffoonery and therefore the expensive schools just end up being populated by complete fools.
Not worth the millions in school fees if you ask me
There was a thorough analysis done by @Gaines and a few other talkers on the merits of a good public school vs private school. The points raised completely changed my view on what quality education really is vs what we have been raised to believe.
The only reason ya kupeleka mtoi ISK is if you have “fuck you” money kama governors. I’m talking people worth hundreds of millions not mere mortals.
For everyone else, ni muhimu kujua education, just like everything else, has a point of diminishing returns i.e more money doesn’t yield significantly better education outcomes past a certain point.
After that point ni bidii ya mtoto na genetic predisposition that matters.
Most students at these international schools are the kids of diplomats and NGO/multinational staffers. The employer pays their fees so they don’t feel the pinch.
They’re worth it just to escape retards. If I had millions to spare. Definitely taking my child there.
Public schools kwanza secondary zimejaa sodomists kama @kanguthu with children as young as 13 being forced to share rooms with 17 year olds from disadvantaged areas who use their tushies to quench their satanic thirst
Wewe mbwa ulisomea international school na you are a failure. You are the perfect example. After your pops funneled every dime he had to your education bado you became a failure in life doing shoddy deals
Elite (hereby used to mean expensive) private schools are more about a sense of safety, security and the social well-being of the students who choose to attend.
Imagine you grew up playing polo kama my bro Kigen Moi and riding dirt bikes kama my buddy Kibaki Junior or playing golf kama master AppleBee. Automatically, you have to go to an elite private school that offers you the opportunity to continue partaking in those hobbies. Could you go to a school like Alliance/Starehe/Nairobi school? Absolutely but you’ll not have similar opportunities to mimic your daily life or what you’ve been used to as a privileged kid.
It’s also about maintaining a particular social circle. Rich kids mostly grew up together in exclusive neighborhoods so they also want to school together for the most part. Their parents are friends or friends of friends so it makes sense to continue these relationships. The education offered in such schools is not any better than what you’d get at a top public school but it happens that it’s more “diverse”. You can choose to stupidly study Indonesian history. Such an offering is not available in ordinary high schools because they’re limited to the usual subjects taught over decades.
Imagine AppleBee not having anyone to talk to about golf at school because his classmates grew up herding goats . Imagine trying to improve your French because you’ll eventually end up being posted at the Kenyan embassy in Paris but you have no one to practice with because the school you’re at doesn’t offer language classes. Once again, it’s not that the education is better at elite private schools (maybe it is) but rather that they offer a plethora of subjects and have the resources to hire an idiot from Moscow to teach AppleBee about pre-historic Russia. Public high schools don’t have allocations for such stupid endeavors.
Some parents want to maintain the same standards of living for their kids while at home and also in school. It’s also about exposure and preparation for what comes next. These schools prepare students for education abroad (in the UK, France…wherever) because they’ll have interacted with students/teachers from those countries by the time they’re jetting off to omusungu land. You have to get out there and figure out how things are done and then maybe you might find a niche to fill if you ever choose to move back home. It’s a different ballgame.
The reasons you have given can only be justified by “fuck you” money. They are valid reasons that only some fat cat can justify spending money on. For the vast majority of upper middle class Kenyans, taking kids to international schools is financial suicide - death by 1000 cuts.
If you are some bigshot collecting 5 million in rent from your buildings in town, by all means take your kids to ISK etc. You can afford it anyway without sweating.
In my opinion, anyone with access to $5M liquid can afford these schools as well as the financial muscle to take advantage of opportunities post-attending those schools.
Example: the Peponi —> some UK/American university pipeline
{my own opinion. you don’t have to agree with me}
I agree…anyone with $5M in Kenya is not upper middle class. That’s part of the elite. $5M is a shitload of money anywhere on earth and even so in a third world country like Kenya.
Maybe it is but understand that it’s only 600M Kenya shillings. There are many Kenyans with access to that cash. Although less than 8000 Kenyans make 100k and above per month, there’s a few thousand Kenyans who have in excess of 1B at their disposal.
There’s no concept of fuck you money in Kenya because only 5 people meet that threshold. Therefore anyone with access to 200M - 2B is just upper middle class. Again, the 5 people don’t count.
. Imagine trying to improve your French because you’ll eventually end up being posted at the Kenyan embassy in Paris but you have no one to practice with because the school you’re at doesn’t offer language classes. Once again, it’s not that the education is better at elite private schools (maybe it is) but rather that they offer a plethora of subjects and have the resources to hire an idiot from Moscow to teach AppleBee about pre-historic Russia. Public high schools don’t have allocations for such stupid endeavors.