OUR STORY
Impertimus recognizes the challenges facing households in educating their children in Kenya. Majority of these households have repeatedly faced the high cost of catering for this obligation, with parents in poor households barely managing to support their children through the various levels of education in the country.
It is this challenge that saw the government re-introduce free primary education in January 2003 and later introduce free secondary school education in 2008 by the then President Mwai Kibaki, as efforts to reduce the cost burden on parents . Despite this intervention, the cost of secondary education remained relatively high while primary education became widely accessible due to almost zero costs required after the implementation of the policy.
Recent efforts in reducing the cost of secondary education include the 2018 upward revision of tuition subsidies from Ksh 12, 870 to 22,244 per child, thereby further lowering the costs.
The challenge
Again, despite these interventions, children from poor households are still likely to join their first year of secondary education late, drop out of school after joining or worse not join at all. Parents are still unable to cater for the initial joining requirements, that is, cost for school uniforms, stationery, transport and additional tuition fees.
The government had introduced a bursary scheme for the poor since 1994 but a study conducted by Njoro and Orodho (2003) on the bursary scheme found that despite there being students who had benefited from the scheme, it had had no significant impact on enrollment by the poor. This is because the scheme targeted students already enrolled in secondary school missing out those who had failed to raise the initial fees of joining secondary school, despite their academic eligibility. This scenario is still the same today as little has been done to monitor the disbursement of bursaries to ensure that funds reach the intended beneficiaries.
Scholarship positions are another option. These are usually offered to exemplary performing students leaving out the majority of average performers. They are thus unreliable given their limitation in number and funding capabilities.
Ultimately, parents are left to rely on fundraising ceremonies where family and well-wishers aid their efforts to take their children to school. In most instances, the child is able to join school with the funds raised but the parent is later left to struggle sustaining the child in school for the subsequent academic years.
Why Impertimus?
We therefore, aim to enhance the efforts of improving access to secondary education by providing an all rounded financial solution to help parents educate their children.
Our intervention equips parents and guardians to intentionally plan for the cost of their children’s education in advance. Through an affordable and flexible saving platform, the parents create a pool of funds to educate their children, gain basic business skills and are given access to business loans thus increasing household income.
‘It is no longer a matter of the level of household wealth that determines the future of our children’s education, but the intentional effort of parents to willfully save for this future.
Our end goal is; a child joins school, stays in school and the parent prospers economically.
