Private Education Provision in Fragility Access and Quality of Fee-Paying Private Schools in the Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya

Abstract

Between 2012 and 2018, I was overseeing three humanitarian-supported schools under the Refugee Education Trust (RET) International in the Dadaab refugee camp, Kenya. During the 2016–2017 academic year, the schools experienced a drastic decline in enrolment. Compelled to account for the dropouts, I coordinated their tracing in the camp. The tracing led to the discovery of the learners enrolled in Fee-Paying Private Schools (FPPs). This intriguing revelation later became a point of reflection while reading for my Master of Arts in Education Planning, Economics, and International Development in 2019-2020. During my master's studies, I mapped an estimated 22 FPPs of primary education level in the Dadaab refugee camp, identifying that approximately 9,568 learners were enrolled. With little glimpse of these schools' realities, the mapping led to more questions than answers. The exploration sparked my interest in pursuing a qualitative study of access to and the quality of education in FPPs for my PhD. My literature review on FPPs highlights emerging studies that explore these non-traditional education providers in refugee camps. However, less is empirically known about the experiences of access and quality of education in FPPs in refugee camps. To address this research gap, I conducted a qualitative study between September 2022 and February 2023 in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. My overarching research question examines the ways, if any, in which FPPs in the Dadaab refugee camp contribute to education access and quality for different population groups. Consequently, I pursued two sub-research questions. The first explores the perspectives of FPP and non-FPP respondents on the contributions and barriers of FPPs in improving access to and quality of education. The second assesses the views of refugee education actors, such as humanitarian organisations, the Dadaab Private School Association, and the Ministry of Education, on whether and how, if at all, FPPs can integrate into Kenya's national refugee education policies and strategies. I adopted a Critical Theory lens for my data collection, analysis, and discussion to answer my research question. Underpinned by a structure-agency conceptual framework, Critical Theory enabled an in-depth examination of the realities of access to and the quality of education provision in FPPs in the Dadaab refugee camp. Within this framework, I assessed the structure-agency dynamics in the Dadaab refugee context that shape the camp's education landscape and examine the emergence and choice of FPPs. I interviewed 44 respondents in collaboration with research assistants from the refugee community. This collaboration mitigated the potential biases inherent in my outsider positionality—Kenyan, a former humanitarian worker, and a PhD scholar at the University of Cambridge. The interviews included semi-structured interviews with FPP parents, teachers, students, and non-FPPs parents. I also conducted key informant interviews with the Dadaab private school association officials, humanitarian education officers and the Sub-County Ministry of Education official. The multiple sets of respondents helped with data and methodological triangulation, enhancing my study's credibility. I thematically analysed the qualitative data collected using the Delve tool software. My findings highlight the distinct yet critical contribution of FPPs to access to and the quality of education since their emergence in 2007 in the Dadaab refugee camp. While disconnected from the mainstream refugee education system, the FPPs address education gaps attributed to the structural dilemma of humanitarian-state refugee education provision. Since the establishment of the Dadaab refugee camp in 1991, refugees have been excluded from the public education system and have relied on short-term humanitarian provision with uncertain funding. This has led to the emergence of FPPs. In addition, the FPPs have adopted multiple approaches to integrate identity and ownership, which are rarely addressed in mainstream refugee education. The FPPs have integrated ethnoreligious identities through indigenous Islamic religious education, providing sociocultural identity to the Somali-Muslim refugees who constitute 97% of the refugee population. The FPPs are branded as refugee-owned and/or refugee-led, despite 89% of FPPs reporting that they are either owned or co-owned by Kenyans, to reinforce their affiliation with the refugee community. The FPPs adopt a more collaborative school management approach, giving refugee parents control and accountability for their children's engagement and participation in education. These approaches go beyond aligning with refugees' educational quality expectations to foster relatability and provide a sense of safety. However, these adaptations are shaped by FPPs' business orientation, further highlighting the delicate balance they employ to navigate the structural complexity of the Dadaab refugee camp and the refugee education agency's needs, accessibility and diversity. While appealing to the desire for identity and control in their education, their accessibility is limited to refugees who can afford school fees. Moreover, the FPPs have little incentive for the inclusion of minority refugee nationalities and ethnicities, as the schools are known to have a strong ethnoreligious orientation, aligning with Somali Muslims who constitute the majority of the refugee population. Nevertheless, the proximity of FPPs has attracted enrolment of South Sudanese and Kenyans residing around the camp, as a convenient school option. My study notes a considerably lower enrolment of girls and a lack of resources for accommodating learners living with disabilities in FPPs. The low enrolment of girls in FPPs underscores sociocultural gender disadvantages when access to education is contingent on the monetary cost to the refugee household. Traditional gender roles and early marriage are given prominence over the progression of the education of refugee girls, especially when their education comes at a monetary cost. In navigating the Ministry of Education, quality regulatory standards, refugee education expectations, and the uncoordinated parallel operation with non-FPPs, the FPPs encounter dilemmas and tensions in their adaptations within the complex context of the Dadaab refugee camp and in aligning with the agency demands of refugees. Constrained by resources, FPPs exploit the Ministry of Education's limited presence to comply with regulatory quality standards. The FPPs have less business incentive to invest in the location and infrastructure to meet the regulatory quality standards in the temporary situation of refugee camps. However, the FPPs are seen to have a better-equipped teaching workforce, trained and proportionate to learners, to meet the refugee quality expectations for their marketability. The limited regulatory oversight and uncoordinated parallel operations of FPPs and non-FPPs have led to overlaps and conflicts, as evidenced by FPPs poaching top-performing learners and trained refugee teachers from non-FPPs. This conundrum poses the risk of undermining the quality of education and the continued provision of education to refugees. There are three key contributions in my thesis. First, it reveals, for the first time, the intricate workings of the refugee education private schooling landscape through the lens of Critical Theory, providing a multidimensional understanding of the interplay of structure and agency in FPPs' school choice, grounded in lived experiences in refugee education research. Second, it provides a new, in-depth look at the estimated proportions of refugee school-aged children in FPPs, the adaptations made by FPPs to meet refugee education needs and quality expectations, and their efforts to fulfil their business interests. Third, it illuminates previously unknown education market failures in the Dadaab refugee camp, offering an opportunity to reconceptualise refugee education policies and strategies in Kenya and lessons for other contexts.