About 20 percent of adult population in Embu is illiterate

Embu,

Saturday September 9, 2023

KNA by Samuel Waititu

About 20 percent of the adult population in Embu County does not know how to read or write, County Adult and Continuing Education Officer Stephen Mboi has said.

He said data from the Central Bureau of Statistics of 2019 also indicate that illiteracy levels among men and women stood at 18 and 21 percent respectively.

Speaking on Friday in Embu Town during this year’s World Literacy Day Celebrations, Mboi said current enrolment in adult education stood at 2, 460 including 1, 864 women and 596 men spread in 63 centers across the county.

He said last year 534 adults managed to sit for proficiency exams while 113 did Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and 89 have registered to sit for the national exams this year.

The officer however said of late they had witnessed an increase in the number of young men aged between 20 and 25 enrolling for adult education classes.

This, he said, was largely attributable to rising cases of boys dropping out of school due to the allure of quick money in thriving muguka and sand mining businesses that are very popular in the county.

“Majority of the cases we are getting of young men enrolling in adult education classes are of those who at one point discontinued their education and have come to realize the importance of it,” he said.

He said the trend if not reversed will in years to come create social imbalance owing to education inequality between men and women.

“The likely scenario in the future is that we will have more women who are educated than men in the county which will affect the social structure of the society,” he said.

He said the widened education gap between men and women will most probably lead to a decline in marriage.

The officer said one of the challenges facing them was the lack of adequate teachers to handle the rising demand.

He said currently the whole county had 58 adult education instructors and the distribution was posing a challenge as a result of growing enrollment.

Courtesy; KNA