Africa: Free primary education in Kenya is beginning to show the sort of results the Commission for Africa wants to see throughout the continent. Rob Crilly reports from Nairobi.
George Owino's gangling frame comes tumbling out of the classroom. His maths lesson has finished, and he is racing off to play football on the red dust pitches which surround the primary school.
But, despite his neat blue jumper and starched white shirt, he looks out of place. He is a giant among his year five classmates.
For the 15-year-old only started primary school two years ago.
"Learning is great. It is interesting and it means that when I am older I will be able to get a job of my choice, not be stuck with whatever is left," he says quietly.
George is one of the beneficiaries of Kenya's free primary education policy, introduced two years ago by incoming president Mwai Kibacki.
If the Commission for Africa is successful in introducing universal, basic education throughout the continent, then donor governments and development gurus are likely to spend a lot of time studying the experience of Kenya and the example of George.
George's parents died when he was young, and his elderly grandparents could not afford the 10,000 shillings (€100) it would have cost to send him to school.
Then, in 2003, with the fees abolished overnight, his aunt brought the 13-year-old to enrol at the Olympic primary school. They were among hundreds of parents and children who besieged the school to demand places.
Olympic stands amid the cardboard-roofed shacks and stray goats of Kibera, said to be Africa's largest slum. But the school has a reputation for being one of Nairobi's best, despite its peeling brown paint and the broken windows patched with newspaper.
Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, visited its grounds during his whistlestop tour of East Africa in January. He said then that Olympic and Kenya's free primary education policy represented an African success story.
But behind the headline figures - 1.5 million more children enrolled in Kenya's primaries - you find a system struggling to cope.
The strains are obvious as Betty Manyonyi, deputy head at Olympic, pulls open the door to class 8C. Ten rows of children, each nine-strong, leap to their feet to chant "Good morning Mrs Manyonyi".
In two years, Olympic's roll has grown from 1,600 pupils to 2,400. Meanwhile, the government has added only a handful of extra teachers, bringing the total to 33.
"Before, the ratio was about 40 children to each teacher throughout Kenya, but now it is 66. In our school, we have 70 or 80," says Mrs Manyonyi. "We really feel it would be easier if we could reduce the ratio. It is so difficult managing classes so big. Every day we have to go the extra mile."
But she is quick to say that no one wants to return to the old system.
"People must be able to send their children to school, no matter how poor they are. We just have to cope as well as we can," she says.
Recent research confirms her analysis.
Prof Daniel Sifuna, who produced a report for a Kenyan education umbrella group, concluded that standards had dropped. He said money was being diverted from other areas of social spending - such as schools for disabled children - to pay for the increase in pupils.
"There are very many issues associated with quality of education," he said yesterday. "No classrooms were constructed, extra teachers were not employed, so it is highly possible that, of those 1.5 million, many will have dropped out already."
And, of course, corruption is never far away in Kenya.
Prof Sifuna said he had compiled evidence of inflated pupil rolls and of school management boards packed with illiterate parents who were unable to audit accounts.
Above all, his report warned that the country was simply unable to cope with such a vast programme of expansion. Kenya's free education policy was based on a simple election pledge which had never been properly costed, it concluded.
He warned donor governments to be wary of such bold political gestures.
"The problem is that if these countries declare free primary education, the donor community rushes in to support them, but they find their support is unsustainable. They cannot just go on pumping money in," he said.
"The key is to find out what capacity exists and then implement the programme gradually. Simply abolishing fees is not the way to do it."