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{
    "id": 144467,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/144467/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 360,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "June 24th 2009 PARLIAMENETARY DEBATES 1576 Mr. Odhiambo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "I am seconding the amendment and I think Mr. Mwangi has read it out. Many of our quality assurance officials have not been facilitated enough to monitor the quality of education in our schools. This is because they lack funds and the morale. Therefore, they do not have the ability and facilities to monitor the performance of schools. This amendment, if enacted, will enable school inspectors, quality assurance officials or education officers to do their work better. In my constituency, only one of the quality assurance officers has a motorbike which is not even serviced. Sometimes it is not even fueled. So, this amendment asks for more than just a budgetary allocation. It also seeks to ensure that the monitoring of schools is improved. That way, the quality assurance officers will check and monitor the performance of our secondary and primary public schools. In fact, during the colonial period, the inspectors of schools were allocated vehicles or motorbikes. This enabled them to move round to check the performance of schools. The performance of public schools was better than that of private schools at that time. We support the idea of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance that we will have centres of excellence. At the end of the day, those centres will be like the private schools that we are talking about. They will have better facilities than those found in public schools. The people who are endowed with resources will take their children to the centres of excellence. I would rather the money is distributed fairly instead of it being channeled to one school. That way, we will have most schools in constituencies having basic facilities. With the current proposal, we will have one school with excellent facilities while others have none. I am talking about facilities such as laboratories, libraries and ICT centres. We support the idea of creating centres of excellence. However, two things need to be done. First, the centres of excellence should be increased to five per constituency. If this is done, many schools will look alike. Alternatively, the money should be distributed to various schools so that they can buy what they require. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the morale of teachers is very low because they are not paid well. Recently, the salary of teachers was only increased after they went on strike. We want the Government to know that unless teachers are paid well, like they are paid in private schools, their morale will be low and their production will not be high. We know of teachers who have left public schools for private schools because of better pay. While in the private schools, they produce better results than when they were in public schools. It has been mentioned that the staffing level in public schools is inadequate. The recommended ratio is one teacher to 40 pupils. Today, we have one teacher handling 180 pupils. Unless this matter is attended to, the quality of education in public schools cannot compare with that of private schools. This can be rectified if more funds are allocated to public schools."
}