JAMILA'S MEMO: Don’t lie to children

Earlier this year, Kenya witnessed the first transition of students into Grade 10 under the Competency-Based Education system. The government promised a 100 per cent transition.

When challenges emerged — lack of fees, shortages of spaces, students being placed in schools they did not choose, some schools receiving no learners at all while others overflowed — the response from education officials was swift and reassuring. Parents were told: take your children to school. No fees? No problem. No uniforms? Still no problem. Government, they said, would handle the rest.

For a moment, there was relief. We visited Mukuru Kwa Njenga slum in Nairobi during that period and met families that had almost lost hope. Children were stranded at home simply because their parents could not afford school fees.

Then came the government reassurance. Education officials promised everything had been sorted out. There were smiles, relief, and excitement. Finally, these children would continue with school.

Except now, three months later, it appears “everything” may only have lasted a few days. Because what is now emerging is deeply disturbing. Learners who had supposedly been “placed” in schools were quietly sent home shortly after reporting. Schools are saying they never received any government funding. No commitment. No arrangement. Not even a follow-up call.

Suddenly, that proudly announced “100 per cent transition” is beginning to sound less like an education success story and more like a motivational speech. Apparently, the transition worked perfectly until the schools started asking who was actually going to pay for it.

This is where the conversation stops being about policy and starts becoming about honesty. Because if the government knew there was no clear plan, no funding, and no capacity to sustain those learners, then why make promises to desperate parents in the first place? Why give children hope only to withdraw it a few weeks later? There is something especially painful about lying to children. Children believe, they trust. Children hear government officials on television and assume adults are telling the truth.

So when a child reports to school believing their future has finally opened up, only to quietly return home days later, what exactly are we teaching them about leadership, about institutions and about honesty? And the worrying part is this: in less than six months, another group of students will sit exams hoping to transition smoothly into Grade 10. Yet from everything we are seeing, there still appears to be no sustainable plan.

This is happening in a country where enormous time, money and energy are constantly being spent elsewhere. Politics. Mobilisation. Empowerment programmes. Campaigns. But surely education itself is empowerment. Surely keeping a child in school should be among the highest priorities of any serious government. In fact, we seem to have mastered the art of launching things before figuring out how they will actually work.

That is why we ask again: what exactly has happened to our leadership priorities?

Because if there is nothing to offer, then perhaps silence is better than promises that cannot be sustained.

Disappointing adults is one thing. But lying to children? That is something else entirely.