4.3.3 Focus on orphans, poor and vulnerable
children
Another motivation stated by the school owners for setting up
their schools in Kibera has to do with the empathy and concern for the poorest,
orphans and vulnerable children. They wanted to offer the opportunity to
orphans and vulnerable children who could not afford to be educated in their
institutions. In stressing on the importance of this trend, some of school
owners reported that:
«The area has two developed academies which targets
pupil from relatively rich families who are able to pay the high rates of
school fees they charge. This led us to start up this school to cater for
children who were not able to enrol into public schools and other academies for
one reason or the other. In fact we wanted to give orphans and vulnerable
children the opportunity to have access to education.»(School owner B. St
Stephen Children Centre & school)
And,
«I was so much concerned with the fate of orphans,
destitute and neglected children. As a Christian, I felt so bad when I use to
see them around. I first started teaching them in my house and seeing that the
number was increasing, the community and some members of the church helped me
to set up a school for this particular group of children.» (School owner F
(Support Orphans and Destitute Academy)
These factors are extremely important in understanding the
investment phenomenon taking
place in many developing countries. In this
case, the mushrooming of private schools catering
for the poor and the needier in the slum of Kibera is partly
attributed to the huge number of less educated children living in the
community.
4.3.4 Profit motive
The school owners that took part in the research acknowledge
charging fees to their pupils for many purposes. Some of these costs are either
allocated for uniforms, text books or examination fees. Although not every
school applies this fee scheme for all the pupils' expenses, it is however
worth noting that all of the 20 schools in this study charge a registration
fee. The monthly fees for children in the research schools range from
£3.97 to £13.49 (see figure 6). These fees are for many of the school
owners, the principal financial income of their schools and are used in
covering the expenses related to the functioning of the business. The main
costs for the school owners are teacher salaries.
Figure 6 Monthly fees
Although it has been noted that all these schools charge fees
on business principles for their
effective functioning, our study has
brought forward the fact that, a good number of these
schools, if not all of
them, equally offer considerable support in the form of scholarships to
the needier pupils. We specifically laid an emphasis on this
issue while setting the questions to school owners. It was found that close to
a relatively high proportion of the schools do offer scholarship to two
categories of pupils. This form of support accounted for up to 65% of
scholarships awarded for orphans and 25% for outstanding children (tables 5 and
6). Not absolutely refuting the fact that they make some money out of their
investments, many of the school owners however do emphasise that their
investment aimed first and foremost, at covering the educational needs of the
population in which they themselves live. Offering assistance to such students
contribute to make the awarding institution a valuable one and thus motivate
many other pupils and parents to cast their choice on it for future enrolments.
This could be seen as a marketing policy taking place in a competitive business
arena.
Table 5: The school offers scholarships for orphans
The school offers scholarships for orphans
|
Frequency
|
Percent
|
Valid Percent
|
Cumulative
Percent
|
|
Valid yes
no
Total
|
13 7 20
|
65.0 35.0 100.0
|
65.0 35.0 100.0
|
65.0
100.0
|
Table 6: The school offers scholarships for outstanding
students
The school offers scholarships for outstanding
students
|
Frequency
|
Percent
|
Valid Percent
|
Cumulative
Percent
|
|
Valid yes
no
Total
|
5 15 20
|
25.0 75.0 100.0
|
25.0 75.0 100.0
|
25.0
100.0
|
| 
