Abstract:
The declarations of the 1990 Jomtien World Conference on Education and the 2000
Dakar World Education Forum both emphasized that to achieve Education for All (EFA) by
2015 , in addition to increased access to education, all countries would require to improve the
quality and equity of education so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are
achieved by all. Ministries of education worldwide fully agree with this interpretation of the EFA
mission, Kenya included. However, many educational planners in developing countries have
raised two related questions: firstly, when resources are scarce, can greater improvements in the
performance of a population of students be made by focusing these resources on a limited
section of the population? Secondly, would it be better to spread these resources thinly across
the whole student population? The issues leave planners in a dilemma, and suggest that there
might be an inherent trade-off situation that operates in education systems between the average level of student learning outcomes and their equitable distribution.
