KITENGILA, KENYA – At a private school in Kenya, the classrooms look like few others. Instead of standing up and lecturing at Rare Gem Talent School, teachers use hands-on lessons that focus on sights, sounds and feelings designed for a unique type of learner: students with dyslexia.
Despite increased access to mainstream education in Kenya, students with learning disabilities are often left behind. Requiring only modifications to the core curriculum, Rare Gem is one of the few schools in the country designed specifically for children with dyslexia and other learning challenges.
Dyslexia affects about 10% of learners and represents a stumbling block to literacy. A lack of accommodation threatens to leave out a wide segment of Kenya’s thriving youth population – and across the continent.
“The teachers didn’t understand me,” said Jason Malak Atati, a student of rare gems, at his old school. “This school is much better.”
Dennis Omari, a special needs educator, said that common problems among children with dyslexia are simple errors that hinder reading and writing, such as confusing letters such as “b” and “p” or even the number “9.” “Early signs to look out for are if children have problems with phonological awareness — the inability to listen to subtle sounds in a particular language — and when children fail to read,” Al-Omari said.
Rare Gem addresses barriers through what Al-Omari calls a multisensory approach to reading, where teachers focus on alternative learning styles. They can be visual, such as color coding the sounds of words, auditory – teaching spelling patterns through song – or concrete, with objects used to represent the construction of words that form the basis of reading.
“You teach step by step so the learner gets what you teach, not lecture style where the teacher stands at the front,” said Rare Gem teacher Dorothy Kiyoko. “You should have extra knowledge on how to deal with them patiently.”
Rare Gem was created in 2012 through the Dyslexia Organization in Kenya and opened with less than 10 learners. Today the school hosts around 210 students, most of whom have dyslexia, but also accommodates those with other learning challenges such as autism.
“If they are identified early and intervened early, they improve their skills and learn to recognize their talents — and they complete school,” said Phyllis Mooney, founder of Rare Gem, who started the school after her son had untreated learning challenges due to dyslexia.
The school charges tuition of $180 per semester, less than the cost of popular upscale private schools but much higher than the public schools most Kenyan children attend.
Stigma and lack of awareness, especially among parents, are the main challenges to enrolling children in alternative education like Rare Gem early, Mooney said. Another major demotivating factor for students is the bullying they may have faced at their previous school.
“At other mainstream schools, there was a lot of discrimination, a lot of bullying,” said Jeffrey Carani, a former Rare Gem student. Today, Karani works as an art teacher at a school and sees mentorship as an essential part of his job. “Not only am I teaching, but I’m showing the kids that I’ve been on the same journey,” he said.
Kenya has successfully increased access to education in recent decades, with the number of students enrolled in primary schools rising from 5.9 million in 2002 to 10.2 million in 2023 – outpacing population growth.
However, access to education for persons with disabilities has lagged. While 11.4% of Kenyan children have special needs, only 250,000 of these students are enrolled in educational institutions in the country, according to the So They Can Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on increasing access to education in Africa.
Rare Gem may provide a model for increasing access without radical reforms to the curriculum. Monyi said the school’s curriculum is not customized, but rather a version of Kenya’s core curriculum modified to meet the learning needs of students with dyslexia and other difficulties. She added: “The curriculum was not designed to be independent, nor is it limited to dyslexia.”
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