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{
"id": 188664,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/188664/?format=api",
"text_counter": 103,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Prof. Ongeri",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Education",
"speaker": {
"id": 124,
"legal_name": "Samson Kegeo Ongeri",
"slug": "samson-ongeri"
},
"content": " Mr. Speaker, Sir, I wish to thank the House for according me the opportunity to make a Ministerial Statement on the ongoing unrest in our institutions. I wish to make a statement on the ongoing students unrest in our institutions. However, before I issue the Statement, I wish, on behalf of the entire education fraternity, to send our condolences to the family of Nur Abdi, the Deputy School Captain, who perished in a fire in Upper Hill Secondary School last weekend. We also send our best wishes to the principal who, on seeing the body of the deceased student, fell sick and was hospitalised. We wish him, and the other students who incurred burns on their faces and both hands in Nairobi West, a quick recovery. To date, nearly 200 secondary schools and other institutions, out of a total of 5,600 public and private secondary schools and 21 public technical training institutes, have been involved in unrest during their second term of study. Out of this, about 180 public and eight private schools have been affected. This is the first time that we are seeing unrest occurring in both public and private institutions. This number represents 3.57 per cent of the institutions at this level. We have consulted extensively with our field officers and chairmen of provincial education boards and district education boards in the affected areas and requested them to work with the heads of institutions to establish the specific causes of the unrest in each of these cases. We have requested and received reports from schools that have experienced unrest. Analysis has revealed the following, as the main causes of the current unrest:- (i) Fear of mock examinations. (ii) Weak institutional management. (iii) Political and other external influences. (iv) Drug and substance abuse. (v) Misuse of mobile phones in schools. (vi) Child abuse. However, each case and region needs to be scrutinised to establish the localised issues that may be the underlying reasons that led the use of the above as the causes of unrest. This is important given that 3.6 per cent of our schools are involved so far, and also the kinds of demands made by students. The specific demands in some schools include:- (i) New models of buses that have TVs and DVDs. (ii) The state of art in music systems. (iii) Unrestricted visits to opposite sex schools, for example boys to girls schools. (iv) Unlimited use of mobile phones in schools. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I will deal with each subheading. First, Mock Examinations. Mock examinations constitute the most significant cause of unrest given that it was ranked as the main reason for the unrest in four provinces of Coast, Eastern, Nairobi and Central. This is consistent with past years, except the large number of schools involved in the current year. Next is the post-election violence. Another important feature that has been reported is post- election violence which appears to have had negative effects on our youth. In this case, areas that received most of the displaced learners seemed to have suffered significantly, for instance Nairobi, Central, Kisii and parts of Eastern Province. July 22, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1963 The third factor is weak management of schools. Weak management in schools is another important cause of indiscipline in schools, particularly where basic needs such as water, light and food are not adequately provided. This involves weak school heads as well as weak boards of governors being party to this sort of problem. Weak management often entails poor communication between the school management and the students as well as other key stakeholders, which in turn causes misunderstanding and indiscipline. Fourth is political and other external interference. Another significant factor, particularly in parts of Eastern, Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western provinces has been political and other external interferences and the clamour to place one of \"our own\" in management. We have been informed of places where politicians are reported to have promised to overhaul school administration once they got elected. This has caused instability in schools as those who were expected to take over undermine their heads. We also got reports of politicians asking our field officers to transfer officers and teachers out of their areas. All this pressure has had negative perception on the image of some of our school heads. Mr. Speaker, Sir, another major fact reported in the field is drug and substance abuse. This has been reported from all provinces, with drug and alcohol being blamed for students' indiscipline and subsequent unrest. Our field officers provided examples of products, some of them alleged to be in supermarkets, that are in current use by students as drugs and substances. There appears to be a wide range of products that are readily available and affordable to our children in schools. Hon. Members may be interested in the claim that schools in urban areas and along highways are the most vulnerable. The list of some of the products alleged to be used in propagating the drug and substance abuse include \"Old Jamaica\", liquor chocolates, liquor sweets, chocolates with fillings, and \"Cuba\" (Indian). Our children get \"high\" on drugs and other substances. Once the children get \"high\", on drugs and other substances, they are no longer in control of their instincts. This may explain why one would bolt a dormitory door from outside and throw fire inside, as it happened at Upper Hill High School. Again, hon. Members may wish to know that in the case of Upper Hill High School, the arsonists also bolted the door of the neighbouring dormitory from outside, thus ensuring delayed help from other students. It is regrettable that we lost one innocent boy in this debacle. Mr. Speaker, Sir, misuse of mobile phones has played a very damaging role in mobilising students against mock examinations through rumours that the mock examination results would be used to determining Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results for the year 2008. This unfortunate rumour has played havoc in schools, especially in Coast, Eastern, Central and Nairobi Provinces. Mock examinations are not standardised, have no common marking schemes and are never submitted to the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) for grading. As such, they cannot be used to determine grades in any of our national examinations. It is, therefore, most unfortunate that this cheap rumour has been used to cause so much damage in some of our schools. This is the first time that we have seen school unrest spreading across public and private schools. It is also the first time that we see a widespread use of fire in school protests. In several cases, there appears to be no reasons why schools went on strike. For example, cases have been reported of students going on strike in sympathy with other striking students in their neighbourhoods. One of the bizarre cases is a situation where a girls boarding school received a new school bus, which arrived at 9.00 p.m and triggered a neighbouring school to go on strike in sympathy with the girls, not knowing that those were screams of joy and celebrations. 1964 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 22, 2008 Mr. Speaker, Sir, this experience may constitute what is called \"delayed reaction\" amongst the youth. The pains the country went through in January, 2008 may be the main cause of vengeance amongst the youth in our schools, who may be expressing the after-shock. This scenario calls for remedial actions by all those concerned, particularly by us in the education sector, Government, parents, religious leaders, Parliament and local leaders. Schools are centres for learning and cultivating cultural and social values as entrenched in our curriculum. This being the case, we all must accept that the youth have gone beyond the limits, and that their actions often reflect the society in which they live. It is evident that a culture of impunity is getting entrenched in our society, which we need to nip in the bud. It is time for us all to ask ourselves whether we, as a people, have provided the values and role models needed by our youth as they grow up. We also need to ask whether our society has decayed to a level where impunity and disregard for human life have become acceptable. Mr. Speaker, Sir, there is an urgent need for us to put in place adequate mechanisms to protect our children. To this end, the Ministry, in January, 2008, having recognised that such a situation would arise, took action in order to be able to reach out to the communities and institutions within the surroundings of our schools and universities. I want to take this opportunity to thank the principals and the headmasters who co-operated, and we were able to, in fact, prevent a catastrophe in our national education programme. Without very intensive dialogue that we have had with the heads of our institutions, particularly at secondary, tertiary and university levels, our education programme would have fallen apart. I thank the principals for that action. We also did realise that one of our major problems that we have got to deliberate, agree and accept, is that our schools are being totally unsafe, because of the events that we saw. As I speak, we have developed a safety manual for our schools. It is in print and will come out at the end of this month. This is meant to give guidelines on how we should conduct our affairs and ensure the safety of our students in our various institutions, wherever they are. In addition, having gone through an era of post-election violence, we have developed, as an institution, a peace in education programme manual. This is also in print and will be rolled out to reach students and teachers in good time. It will form part of the curriculum in our schools in order to contain this issue. As we look into the future, we must recognise that, despite the huge expansion and enrolment that has taken place in Kenyan education institutions, there has been no national training programme on institutional management. To this end, the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) has been revamped to enable it deal with institutional management in order to remove the inadequacies that are inherent in the management of our institutions."
}