Policy Brief No. 13. Schooling All Children: The Policy implications of Mothers’ Educational Decision-making

Abstract

This policy brief reports on a research project Educating Daughters, Educating Sons: mothers and schooling in rural Kenya. It describes research findings about the conditions in which 32 mothers living in Bungoma District in Kenya make decisions about which child to educate, to what level and with what expectations. In this community, mothers have different levels of schooling, and different recollections of their struggles to be educated. They are raising many children with different kinship and legal relationships to them. The decisions they make about these different children’s schooling highlight the complexities of the relational cultural world in which the mothers are positioned and signal the importance of bringing mothers and the family-education couple into the policy framework