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{
    "id": 1498632,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1498632/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 226,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr Julius Migos Ogamba",
    "speaker_title": "The Cabinet Secretary for Education",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "national and county levels. The draft policy is to be subjected to the constitutional processes of stakeholder validation and public participation prior to its publication and adoption by the Cabinet. The Ministry targets to have the policy in place by the end of term one in 2025. Hon. Speaker, the Ministry works with county governments in covered areas to enhance access to school meals for learners in pre-primary and primary schools. Since pre-primary education is devolved, county governments take the lead in providing school meals for such learners. However, the Ministry has adopted collaborative strategies to work with county governments and other partners to ensure that all learners in covered learning institutions are provided with school meals. This includes entering into inter-governmental partnership agreements as is the case with Nairobi City County. The agreement provides a framework for collaboration between the national Government and the Nairobi City County Government to provide school meals to learners from pre-primary to primary school level. Hon. Speaker, a school meal’s module has been developed within the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) platform and successfully piloted in Isiolo. To ensure effective implementation, it is essential that all learners are registered on NEMIS, thus enabling school meals data to be generated directly from the platform. Additionally, a mobile application linked to NEMIS has been introduced for reporting daily learner’s attendance. The application allows schools to track the number of learners who receive meals every day and monitor food stock balances in real time. Head teachers and school meals programme co-ordinators in Garissa, Wajir, Mandera, Kwale and Isiolo have already been trained on using the NEMIS school meals module and the mobile application, ensuring readiness for full implementation. Plans are in place to ensure that digitisation is implemented in all our counties that are benefiting from the school meals program. Hon. Speaker, the alternative providers of basic education and training institutions in Kenya provide education for students who may not have access to mainstream schools, often due to socio-economic and geographical difficulties. Those schools are primarily operated by private individuals, faith-based organisations and community-based groups, rather than by the Government. Those institutions complement the Government's efforts to provide education training for all. Alternative Provisions for Basic Education and Training (APBET) typically serve communities in the urban informal settlement areas within the cities, towns and former municipalities. It is mainly in those environments that APBET institutions have emerged as viable options of responding to educational needs of children, youth and adults who are unable to join formal education institutions. Currently, there is no legal or policy framework for the Ministry of Education to provide school meals to learners in APBET institutions. The current budgetary provision is also limiting in terms of the scope that the school meals programme can cover. Currently, the school meals programme covers a total of 2.6 million learners in 8,185 schools across the country as of 2024. This extends to over 26 Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) counties and informal urban settlements. It is also important to note that the budget for school meals in this financial year was reduced to Ksh3 billion from Ksh5.4 billion in the Financial Year 2023/2024, and an expansion of the programme would require an additional budget. I submit."
}