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"id": 1563848,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563848/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Olekina",
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"speaker": {
"id": 407,
"legal_name": "Ledama Olekina",
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"content": "schools as supplementary capitation to facilitate the achievement of free secondary education. That is also completely misguided. If an agency is able to allocate money to students to get education, it will be very difficult for that agency to transfer that information to the Ministry of Education, so that the Ministry of Education can now take that money and consolidate it to be able to fund students. The only thing which I think the distinguished Senator really saw it fit, and I support that, is where the Ministry of Education can be able to calculate the cost of education per learner and make this information public for primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions. Currently, if you try to do an average, it costs about a maximum of Kshs20,000 per year for a child to be able to get their primary education. It costs between Kshs40,000 to Kshs100,000 in a public secondary school for a child to be able to get their secondary education, and anywhere between Kshs100,000 to Kshs600,000 per year for a child to be able to get higher education in this country. What we need to narrow our thinking on is how to solve the problem of education in this country. We need to borrow the script from the late President on how he abolished school fees and tuition from our schools to ensure that our children get free basic education. That is what we need to be asking ourselves. We need to carry out a comparative analysis, look at other countries; look at the United States as an example. I know some people would say that it is a developed country. No, it is not. It is not only developed, but other African countries are beginning to say that we must prioritize basic education. We are currently allocating Kshs656 billion to education in this country. If we were to say that there is no point in having this money in the NG-CDF, there is no point in having this money elsewhere, we need to now ask ourselves how our system of education works. I want to challenge the Department of Education, even the Committee of Education, for them to look at how we can have a policy shift. The Ministry of Education must now decide that it is time for us to start district schools. I know when you look at the Constitution, the county governments are only tasked, they are mandated by the Fourth Schedule to invest in ECDE and polytechnics. Primary school is a mandate of the national Government. So, what we need to do, first of all, is to look at the Constitution. Can we change that? If my brother is trying to borrow from Article 189 of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 on roles that are carried out by one level of government to another level of government, then I think the best thing to do is to go a notch higher and say, let us look at this task for basic education. Can we redefine basic education? Can we say basic education is ECDE and primary education? Then we move that mandate to the county governments and create district schools. When we create district schools, let us fund them. Let us give them money. Let us give them national Government money and also county government money. That is the only way we are going to be able to achieve free primary education in this country. If we keep on lying to ourselves that we can be able to consolidate funds, NG- CDF, if right now we are having a big debate countrywide on the importance of NG- CDF, who tells you that a politician from the National Assembly, who is the one who is The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}