The Role of Islamic Integrated Education in Enhancing Access to Formal Education In Kenya

Muslim children in Kenya attend several educational institutions including Qur’anic schools, Madrasa and secular public schools. Those who attend all the three tracks usually begin their lessons in Qur’anic schools at about 4.00 AM and move on to the secular public schools between 7.OO AM and 4.00 PM. From the public secular schools, they again move on to Madrassa classes from 4.30 PM to about 6.00 PM. Many of these children have ended up dropping out of either Madrasa or public secular schools due to the distances between these institutions and the curriculum overload involved.This state of affairs has meant that children are missing out either on Islamic education or on the free secular public education. In the last two decades, Kenya has witnessed a new type of institution that combines Islamic religious subjects and the public secular education curriculum. Though these schools are purely private initiatives requiring some form of fee payment, Muslims in Kenya have fully embraced them. This paper argues that the Islamic integrated schools can be an alternative avenue of education for Muslim children since they combine the best of both the Islamic and secular public systems. It traces Islamic education in the different historical epochs, beginning with the arrival of Islam on the shores of the East African coast to the present, with the establishment of the first integrated school in the mid 1990’s. The success of this type of schooling is attested to by the government’s adoption of integration in its 2012 Education Act, as one of the strategies for increasing access to education for Muslims and other minority groups. The paper draws upon field research carried out between April and July 2012 in Garissa County. The study utilized interviews, observation and document reviews to gather data on the popularity of this type of schooling and the challenges they face in combining two different curricula under one roof.