Integrating the Culture of Constitutionalism in the Education Sector: Analysis of Public Education Spending, Reforms and Income Inequality in Kenya
David Kamar Imana

Abstract
The main aim of this article was to find out if public expenditure policy on education in Kenya was pro-poor or not. Benefit Incidence Analysis (BIA) was conducted for the three levels of education, namely; primary, secondary and university. The share of learners from various quintiles of household income or wealth groups enrolled in public schools were estimated using secondary data from household surveys conducted in 2005, 2008, and 2014 in that order. The data on public spending by level of education was obtained from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. The results showed that the poor households immensely benefited from government basic education policies of free primary and free day secondary education. In Kenya, poor households had a large share of enrolment in primary, whereas the rich households had a higher enrolments in both secondary and university levels. Free day secondary education policy has not yielded expected outcomes although it is almost coming to neutral. This implies that distribution of public expenditure on education favor the poor at primary level and not at secondary and university levels. Therefore, the government should not only adopt a redistributive approach to public spending aimed at imroving opportunities for all but it should also review basic education funding formulae. This is important so as to reflect the acute disadvantages facing the poor household income groups and marginalized regions.

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