Alternative Sources of Funding For Free Day Secondary Education ( FDSE ) In Public Schools in Kisii Central District , Kisii County, Kenya

Abstract

The thrust of this paper was to examine the alternative sources of funding for the free Day Secondary Education (FDSE) policy in public schools in Kisii Central District, Kisii County, Kenya. It is concerned with one main question: How adequate is the current government funding mechanism? To answer the question, the paper sets out to achieve three objectives: i) To profile the current trends in unit funding of all levels of education in the country, and ii) to examine The alternative funding strategy for public day secondary education in Kisii Central District, Kisii County, Kenya. The source of data for the paper was a combination of secondary data through desk literature review and primary data from a sample of 148 respondents drawn across various education stakeholders in the study locale. The major finding was that while on the one hand the Government of Kenya through the Ministry of Education was implementing the FDSE policy; on the other hand , the education sector in the study locale was still fraught with myriad of finance related challenges .The funds meant to fast track the FDSE policy are grossly inadequate and irregularly remitted to schools. This has forced the school managers to device alternative sources of financing education which is currently constraining the already poor parents. It is recommended that day secondary schools in Kenya should device more user-friendly modes of generating extra funds from income generating activities that do not burden parents of children from poor socio-economic backgrounds.