East African Scholars Journal of Education, Humanities and Literature Abbreviated Key Title: East African Scholars J Edu Humanit Lit ISSN: 2617-443X (Print) & ISSN: 2617-7250 (Online) Published By East African Scholars Publisher, Kenya Volume-5 | Issue-1 | Jan- 2022 | DOI: 10.36349/easjehl.2022.v05i01.003 *Corresponding Author: Erastus Muchimuti 16 Review Article Inequitable Access to Quality Education in Primary and Secondary Schools in Kenya Limo J. Beatrice 1 , Erastus Muchimuti 2* 1 Department of Educational Management, Policy & Curriculum Studies, Kenyatta University 2 Department of Educational Management, University of Eldoret P O Box 1125-30100, Eldoret, Kenya Article History Received: 19.06.2021 Accepted: 24.07.2021 Published: 22.01.2022 Journal homepage: https://www.easpublisher.com Quick Response Code Abstract: Education is a basic human right as was declared by the United Nations in 1948. Most governments including Kenya have tried to implement free and compulsory basic education. It also subscribes to various international protocols such as Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien, Thailand 1990 and the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, 2000. Since then, the Kenya Government in her Education Sector Strategic Plan and Sessional Paper No. 1 of 2005 has articulated how to attain goals for education. At primary school level where children stay longest in the schooling years and they develop more motor skill, further cognitive skills along with higher socialization than the early childhood education level, has children failing to access education due to poverty, gender imbalances, regional imbalances among other concerns. Secondary education which creates a human capital base higher than primary education along with training youth for further education and the world of work registers restriction to many children due to concerns of poverty, gender imbalances, and insecurity regional disparity among others. This paper articulates in detail the above concerns discussing their manifestations in Kenya. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations made on how to improve access to basic education in Kenya. Among the recommendations are: To make basic education free and compulsory, improve the provision of health services, intensify fight against demeaning cultures, give special attention to children with disabilities, avail employment opportunities to the youth, assure security to all in conflict-prone regions and tighten bursary disbursement procedures. Keywords: Inequitable Access, Quality, Education, Primary, Secondary. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s): This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial use provided the original author and source are credited. INTRODUCTION Children and young people combined makeup around half of Kenya's population, making for a young populace in which women have an average of four children (Glennerster, 2011). Many children drop out of the free, public elementary schools before reaching eighth grade because of unmet needs for school uniforms and shoes, books, pencils, and notebooks. Many families cannot afford to provide their children with the school necessities (Smith, 2016). According to UNICEF (2011), equity in education implies that all children have an opportunity to survive, develop and reach their full potential without discrimination, bias or favoritism regardless of gender, race, religious beliefs, income, physical attributes, geographical location, or another status. OECD {2012} see equity in education as meaning that personal or social circumstances such as gender, ethnic origin or family background are not obstacles to achieving educational potential and that all individuals reach at least a basic minimum level of skills. One of the most efficient education strategies for government is to invest early and all the way up to upper secondary. The highest performing education system are those that combine quality and equity (OECD, 2018). In this sense, education policies and programs aim to address root causes of inequality, to ensure the fundamental rights of all children, particularly those experiencing deprivation, including access to basic protections and services necessary for survival and development. Within discussions of equity and inequality, there are tensions over the principle of equality of opportunity and provision, versus targeted redress of unequal social location (Oketch, 2010).