Kenya's Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Progress Report attributes the success to the government's decision to introduce free and compulsory primary education.
Following this new policy, gross enrolments in primary schools have increased from 5.8 million in 2002 to at least 7 million early this year.
Releasing the report last week,Planning and Development Minister Peter Anyang' Nyong'o said a positive trend has been recorded with the government's review of the schools curriculum.
The MDGs are a set of numerical time-bound targets, arising from the Millennium Summit of September 2000 in New York, that seek to improve people's livelihoods in the new century.
UPE ensures all children get access to quality primary education.
"It is likely that Kenya will achieve the goal of UPE by the year 2015 and in this regard, President Kibaki is now among the world champions of goal 2 and his role was acknowledged during the AU Summit in Maputo," said Nyongo.
The report says the goal of providing universal primary education has been slow due to low enrolments, increased school drop-outs and estimates that some 3 million eligible children are out of primary school.
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative Paul Andre de la Porte, notes that Kenya's achievement in education has been impressive.
De la Porte says adult illiteracy fell steadily in the last forty years from 50 to 18 per cent of the population, while the illiteracy gender gap has reduced significantly from 30 to 13 per cent.
He says large gains in primary enrolment were achieved in the first two decades after independence, adding that the trend reversed in the next two decades, lowering gross enrolment to 91 percent.
"This reversal is due to increased cost of education and poverty levels, as well as tapering off of delays in enrolment age," he said in a speech during the launching of the MDG report.
The UN representative says the drop in enrolment since 1991 has been substantial and can be attributed to both rising costs of education and a decrease in employment opportunities.
The report further attributes recent unsatisfactory performance in the primary school system to Kenya's previous cost-sharing policy and differential geographic access to educational facilities.
To these factors, the 2002-2008 National Development Plan adds staffing problems and mismanagement of education resources.
Budget allocation for primary education declined by 9 percent between 2000 and 2002, with primary schools constituting more than half of Kenya's educational institutions.
The report further reveals that major challenges facing Kenya's education sector relate to its financing, regional disparities in access, high wastage rates, relevance, quality and reducing child labour.
Other specific challenges include immense infrastructure expansion and human resources implications of free primary education.
Although the World Bank and other donor agencies have already made commitments towards its support, resource mobilisation including teacher training by the Government, still remains a challenge.
Another challenge includes the low rates of primary school enrolment in North Eastern Province, closely linked to the nomadic lifestyles of its local populations.
High wastage, repetition and drop out rates, all exacerbated by the rising poverty, HIV/Aids epidemic and child labour have also been identified as one of the factors explaining declining enrolment rates in primary school in Kenya .
The provision of adequate learning facilities at the primary school level, including equipment and human resource capacity, impedes the quality and relevance of the imparted skills to pupils.
The report further identifies inadequate provision of education to children with disabilities owing to the weak identification and assessment mechanisms as a major challenge.
The report identifies the school feeding programme mainly targeting poverty stricken Arid and Semi Arid lands (Asals) people, and the textbook fund, a cushion for poor parents from the cost of learning materials.
The bursary fund, an initiative aimed at improving the transition rates from primary to secondary school by helping poor students meet some of the costs related to secondary school attendance.
According to the report, several reforms in the education sector are underway in Kenya to be able to achieve the UPE goal fully.
Over the next five years, reforms will focus on strengthening the free primary education policy, governance and management, curriculum review and development, and staffing arrangements.
In addition, achieving UPE by the year 2015 will require pursuing already existing programmes, especially the textbook and bursary funds and the school feeding programmes.
It will also be heavily dependent on the implementation of the children's Act, reaching out to communities and sensitising them on cultural and other practices that hinder school enrolment and retention.
Many of these efforts may be supported by enhancing partnership between stakeholders in primary education and provision of an all inclusive education by modifying existing facilities to accommodate children with disabilities as well as training of special education teachers.