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"content": "We ask for more to be allocated to this Ministry. In the last Budget, there was a suggestion by the Minister that every constituency recruits 50 teachers for primary schools and ten for secondary schools. I would like the Minister and Permanent Secretary to observe this religiously. That is the only way we can help more of our young people to access education. Many schools are thoroughly understaffed. We know that there is a staffing problem generally throughout the country, but we will be very vigilant, as Members of Parliament, to ensure that this policy, which is a guideline policy by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, is adhered to. I would like to encourage the Minister to make sure that this is done. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we had suggested last year that in order to change the mindset in the Ministry of Education, they should consider establishing what we call a National Nomadic Commission, the way it is done in Nigeria. A lot of the countries that have got nomadic communities, like Nigeria and Senegal, have got these kinds of commissions which will help the Minister, Permanent Secretary and Ministry staff to assist in access of education that we all require. We have said this in past, and I do not know whether it was taken seriously. We will continue to say it until the Minister and his staff think that it is actually necessary to establish this Commission. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, together with that, there is a draft policy which the Minister, as we know, is working on. We call it mobile education for highly mobile communities in this country. This draft policy requires the input of Members of Parliament, particularly the Pastoralists Parliamentary Group, whose Secretary-General is the current Chair, the hon. Member for Turkana Central. We need to consult and to be involved in this draft policy, so that we can make some input, because the Minister and Ministry staff mean well when they begin to think that way. But we require the involvement of all stakeholders, including Members of Parliament, so that we can reinforce what we have in that policy. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we talked about the issue of training of teachers last year and we will continue to raise it. We need to see whether the Ministry can review this policy. There are very many young people from the northern part of this country who can be good teachers, but because the Government has raised the ceiling for the basic qualifications, quite a number of them cannot access these institutions. So, we want the Minister to reconsider this. Quite a number of young people who were trained with D plus six years ago are very competent P1 teachers. Why can we not just continue with that in cases where you do not get young people from northern part of this country accessing these colleges because they lack the basic qualifications? This is because students who score a C plain from Marsabit or Wajir go for diploma colleges and proceed to universities. If it is possible, we want that bar to be reduced so that we can get more seeking this education. Finally, when the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) sets examinations, it needs to consider that they are set for the whole country. Therefore, the examiners must be conscious of the fact that this examination will done by students in rural areas as much as those in urban areas. Therefore, they must consider---"
}