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{
    "id": 1472559,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1472559/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 255,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) James Nyikal",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker. We are in a crisis because the Ministry of Education is characterised by lack of coherence in policy formulation and implementation. In the recent past, what have they done? They came up with things such as delocalisation, localisation, 100 per cent transition, CBC, and then the university funding system. All these things are not harmonised and do not feed into each other and that is why we have problems. The first thing that the Ministry should do is to immediately sit down and harmonise all these things. The first thought was that the Junior Secondary Schools (JSSs) be domiciled in secondary schools. Suddenly, and I do not know what informed that, they were domiciled in primary schools. With that, there is the problem of infrastructure not only concerning classrooms, but also labs and workshops. We are not even clear today whether in JSS we should have laboratories or workshops. If you maintain this issue of CBC, then you should be talking about workshops. The next thing they should do is to be very clear on what is needed in the technical aspect of JSSs. Are we going to have workshops or laboratories? That one should be stated. The next thing is human resource. Where are the teachers? Have they been trained? They should also be clear about the content. The truth is that until now, there is no clear curriculum for JSS. Go and ask the teachers. They will tell you that there is no clear curriculum yet these kids will be moving to another grade next year. There is no clear schedule of teaching materials that should be used. The first thing the Ministry should do is to sit down and harmonise these policies. In terms of JSS, they must clearly come up with the structures needed. What is the funding that is required for that? I do not know whether the funds are available, but we can do it in three months. This is a must. On the human resource aspect, there may be space in secondary schools. Are we going to re-tool some teachers in secondary school to have these children taught next year? That is something we should look at. The content of what should be taught must be clear. We should know what the curriculum is. If you ask teachers what should be taught, they are not clear about it. The next thing is about teaching materials. Remember when this curriculum started, people were talking about chicken being taken to schools to be slaughtered and things like that. When those jokes ended, we did not end up with a clear schedule of materials. So, this is an emergency. Since the Government is used to putting up committees, it must now put up a committee to look at how this transition is going to take place, starting with infrastructure and the funding of the same. It needs to look at re-tooling of teachers and setting up a clear curriculum. If they have bits and pieces of the curriculum somewhere, they should put them together. Finally, teaching materials are required. If funds are available, something should be done. Unless those things are done, I think we are going to have a crisis. Much more importantly, the Ministry must start to have some coherence in its policy formulation and policy implementation. Things that are being done off the cuff here and there, are going to ruin the education of our children. That is my contribution to this Motion."
}