Supporting teen mothers return to school: Lessons from Kenya

In Kenya, rates of teen pregnancy remain high, with close to 20% of girls aged 15 to 19 either pregnant or already a teen mother.¹ The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated teenage pregnancy as schools closed and movement was restricted. Routine health services were also redirected to prioritise COVID-specific needs. Between January and May 2020, the total number of adolescent pregnancy cases recorded was  151,433, a 40% increase over the previous national average.² 

Some 13,000 Kenyan girls drop out of school every year due to pregnancy.¹  Most are unlikely to return,⁴⁵⁶ affecting their long-term educational, economic and health outcomes.⁷ In Kenya’s informal settlements, teen mothers are  less likely to finish high school or university, less likely to be employed, and more likely to face food insecurity compared with women who become mothers after adolescence.⁸ Unintended pregnancy is the second leading cause of girls not returning to school post-pandemic after lack of money to pay school fees.⁹  

 Research has shown that when teen mothers are able to finish their education, it can cushion them and their children against negative long-term outcomes.⁸ The National Gender and Equality Commission (NGEC) is mandated to investigate compliance of policies regarding equality and non-discrimination. With the added urgency to support teen mothers in the midst of school disruptions caused by COVID-19, NGEC partnered with IDinsight to conduct a rapid review of the literature to inform how the return to school policy is actually implemented.

Kenya’s return to school policy and re-entry guidelines 

Kenya recognises basic education as a fundamental right and freedom.¹¹ Every child’s right to basic education is enshrined in the Constitution of Kenya (2010) and ratified in several Acts of Parliament as well as key policy and legislative documents.⁷ The Children Act (2012) defines a child to be a person under the age of 18 years with a right to be in school regardless of their ethnicity, religion, sex, race, colour, disability, language or culture. Additionally, the Basic Education Act (2013) ensures that there is implementation of free and compulsory basic education for all.

Over the last three decades, the Kenya government has introduced two major policy interventions to facilitate school re-entry for teenage parents. The 1994 School Re-entry Policy for Girls provided guiding principles for educators, parents, and communities in support of teenage mothers’ return to schools.¹³ The policy requires school heads and teachers to unconditionally readmit teenage mothers into school. It specifies that if teen parents face stigma in their previous schools, they should be enrolled into a different school. Additionally, the policy recommends legal action against any adult that impregnates a teen and mandates counselling to be available for teen parents. The Ministry of Education in Kenya then introduced the 2020 National School Re-Entry Guidelines to facilitate and formalise teenage parents’ re-entry into learning institutions.

Challenges: Implementing the school re-entry policy

We conducted a review of seven papers that assessed school re-entry in Kenya for teen parents. We noted there are some methodological limitations on the availability of the literature including that there are non-representative populations, lack of quantitative estimates on prevalence, and with small sample sizes. Nevertheless, these papers provide useful insights into experiences of teenage mothers and parents. In the future, rigorous quantitative studies that more systematically examine the prevalence of school drop-out, re-entry, and associated factors could  better inform policy making.

Key barriers identified to school re-entry for teen mothers in Kenya were: 

• Policy implementation is at the discretion of headteachers in the absence of sufficiently detailed policy implementation directives.¹⁴ The policies did not provide guidelines, for example, on the steps that should be taken when it is discovered that a girl is pregnant, how long she should be able to stay in school while pregnant, how long after birth she should be able to return to school or how to re-integrate teen mothers into school.¹⁵ The policy doesn’t advise on provisions that should be made to help teen mothers catch up with school curriculum after their return.¹⁴¹⁷¹⁸ In addition, the research found that while some schools claimed to be willing to re-admit teen mothers, in actuality, girls faced discrimination based on their apparent academic and sporting abilities. The literature also noted that the policy has some vague provisions which are subject to disparate interpretation and implementation. For example, the policy states that headteachers and other teachers should be ‘understanding’ when handling cases of teen pregnancy and motherhood. However, ‘understanding’ can be interpreted in different ways, making it difficult to keep headteachers accountable for how they implement the policy.¹⁴¹⁷¹⁸
• Lack of monitoring of the implementation of the policy. A major challenge to visibility into the status of implementation of the policies regarding return to school is that there are no standards or systems of monitoring. Though the School Re-entry Policy was enacted in 1994, majority of headteachers and teachers do not have copies of the policy, and it has not been made widely available to the public.¹⁵
• A lack of awareness of the policy among parents, teachers and child parents.⁴¹⁷¹⁸ 
• Stigmatisation by fellow students and teachers. Some girls drop out of school because of the stigma and ostracization attached to being a teen mother, which is viewed as an apparent lack of chastity.⁴⁵⁶ In contrast, teen fathers rarely suffer the same level of stigma as their female counterparts.¹⁷ 
• Low resource allocation to schools to implement the program. Key implementation stakeholders, such as teachers and headteachers, explained that the policy did not make any provisions for financial and human resources to help in readmission of teen mothers, limiting their ability to comply with the provisions.¹⁷
• Low parental involvement in the readmission process & family financial constraints. Teen mothers may struggle to go back to school without the help, support and involvement of their parents. Those  who were able to go back to school cited their parents were willing to send them back and to take care of them and their children.³¹ Families must have the financial resources to cover school fees and school-related costs (such as books and uniforms). Teen mothers from poorer households were found to be less likely to return to school.³²¹⁷  
• Unavailability of child care makes returning to and focusing on education a challenge for teen mothers. A lack of resources for covering the costs related to external child care or unavailability of family members to provide child care are both issues that result in dropping out of school.³²¹⁷¹⁸

Possible Paths to Improved Implementation 

Additional resources and clearer policy guidelines could facilitate a smooth return-to-school process and positive experience for teenage mothers. As such, the following recommendations arose from the literature to clarify the School Re-entry Policy and make guidelines more precise:

1.  Make additional resources available to schools for supporting teen parents including: Accessible childcare services to support child parents; guidance and counselling services for teen mothers; and sensitization on the policy for teachers, parents, and students. 

• Availability of child-care facilities for teen mothers can support school re-entry. Teen mothers may be unable to find and pay for adequate care for their children while they are at school, affecting their ability to receive uninterrupted education. Literature suggests that free or easily-accessible childcare services have promise in ensuring girls can stay in school.³⁷ 
• Counselling services should be made available to teen mothers in and out of school and should involve teen fathers and parents where possible. The National School Re-Entry Guidelines recommend counselling for teen parents – however, this counselling is solely with regards to their new responsibilities as parents. Teen mothers may experience negative mental health effects as a result of the physical, emotional  and social changes they experience by becoming mothers.³⁸³⁹⁴⁰ Receiving counselling support can help them to address difficult thoughts and feelings that may emerge from stigmatisation by their peers and teachers in school, or disappointment from their parents.⁴¹ Support from guidance counsellors in schools can help to rekindle career goals for teen parents and chart pathways for them to achieve those goals. Teen fathers and parents should also receive support to help them cope with the changes occurring in their lives and guidance on how best to support these new mothers.⁴⁰
• A de-stigmatization campaign should be conducted for students, teachers, and headteachers on how to treat returning teen mothers as many teen mothers do not return to school as a result of ostracisation by their peers and teachers. Negative stereotypes continue to dominate understandings of teenage pregnancy and teenage mothering is popularly linked to dependency, promiscuity, and irresponsibility.⁴³ Discourse on the topic should be facilitated amongst students, teachers and parents.

2. Develop and apply standards and systems of monitoring and evaluation to ensure the proper implementation of the School Re-entry Policy and protect child mothers’ right to education. While the 2020 guidelines call for collecting re-entry and drop-out data (Ministry of Education, 2020), it does not stipulate how often the data should be collected, or where the data should be submitted. Keeping track of school dropout and re-entry data will help the Ministry of Education to map the disparate implementation of the policy across schools and counties and provide targeted assistance to ensure teen mothers receive education.

3. Create awareness of the policy via: Media Campaigns, Policy Dialogues, Storytelling/Edutainment and Parents’ meetings. Media can be used to create awareness and sensitisation to the School Re-entry Policy amongst stakeholders. Beyond awareness, there should be clear pathways for child parents and their families to seek support if individual schools do not honour the provisions laid out in the policy. This includes providing information about whom to contact in order to escalate issues to the Ministry of Education, taking into account protection of the minors involved. Additionally, compelling narratives could be  used to show both teens and members of the community that there are options for teen mothers beyond marriage once they become pregnant, including pursuing further education. Parents’ school meetings can also be used as forums to raise awareness amongst parents about the School Re-entry Policy. 

4. Provide conditional cash transfers to teen mothers to help keep them in school. A Randomised Control Trial conducted in Kibera and Wajir in Kenya showed that conditional cash transfers effectively enabled teenage mothers to stay in school.⁴⁴ Conditional cash transfers also show evidence of preventing teen pregnancy and being effective at reducing school dropout for girls more generally.⁴⁵⁴⁶⁴⁷

While re-entry policies and guidelines for teen mothers are key in supporting their right to return to school after pregnancy and childbirth, more steps need to be taken to actively ensure they can continue their education. The Ministry of Education needs to commit to providing more resources and services, and proper implementation and monitoring of the policy to realise the intended impact. IDinsight is planning to provide support to the National Gender and Equality Commission (NGEC) as it develops a policy advisory based on a rapid assessment of the Return to School Policy implementation and best practices. The policy advisory will highlight challenges and promising interventions for supporting teen parents returning to school.