Teachers, headmasters and parents scrambled to find desks, pencils and books for over a million extra students. Many African countries have followed
But Kenya’s policy shift also provided a stepping stone into the record books for 84-year-old Kimani Ng’ang’a Maruge, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, became the oldest person ever to enrol in Standard 1 when he appeared before astonished teachers and fellow pupils in 2004. "I wanted to learn how to read the Bible," an ambition previously frustrated by the high cost of schooling, he later told ‘Voice of America’ journalist Cathy Majtenyi in 2008. "The preachers mislead people. That is why I am back in school."
Despite economic hard times and the violence that swept parts of the country after the 2007 elections, UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, reports that the abolition of school fees has had the intended effect of vastly increasing access to education. The number of primary students in
Encouragingly, the dropout rate, an important measurement of affordability and educational quality, has also fallen. The share of students completing primary school jumped from 62.8 percent in 2002, the last year fees were charged, to 76.2 percent two years later as fewer poor children were forced out for non-payment.
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