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"id": 211211,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Bahari",
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"speaker": {
"id": 156,
"legal_name": "Abdul Bahari Ali Jillo",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I want to thank hon. Karaba for bringing this Motion and giving me an opportunity to second it. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I support the spirit of this Motion because it is true that there is quite a sizeable population of Kenyans who do not have access to quality education. The whole Motion is worded with the issue of access, quality, equity; these are the things that this Motion intends to address. I would like to start, perhaps, by saying that education is a must for everybody. That is the spirit in which we operate in this country. We have emphasised this, time and again, and, therefore, it is incumbent upon the Government to ensure that everybody has access to quality education because we are encouraging people to go for it and, therefore, this must be made available. It is only, perhaps, the Government which can intervene and ensure that this is available. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to start with the issue of access in very many areas, particularly in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALS). Because of the vastness of the land, background of the communities there in terms of the economies, which is pastoral in nature, there tend to be movements depending on the rainfall pattern. This tends to move kids out of schools and at the end of the day, make them quit schooling completely and, therefore, they end up not getting the necessary formal education that is required. Therefore, this is a very, very serious issue and it is only the Government which must find a curriculum, ways and means of ensuring that these people get access to education. The Government should not only ensure that they get education, but quality education. In a number of the few scattered schools that have been built in the ASALS, the problem of quality has continued to persist. Mr.Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, time and again, the number of teachers in schools has continued to decline, and there is very little that has been done over a period of time. So, you find that the few students who have managed to get access to education just play around in schools, because there are no teachers. In fact, half of the classrooms of some schools in my own constituency are not manned due to lack of teachers. So, even those children who happen to be within school compounds still do not have access to education. Sadly, that is happening after we talked to them and convinced them to join school. I heard on radio this morning that in one of the new Pokot districts kids are now, forcefully, being taken to school, but I wonder whether those districts have enough teachers. They may just be playing around in those areas. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, having said that, even at the level of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), in terms of determining the shortage of teachers, they apply the same formula in both arid and semi-arid areas. So, when the issue of student to teacher ratio comes into play, you find that the numbers which are considered appropriate for those areas are not necessarily achieved, because of the formula that the TSC has been using to determine teacher shortages in ASAL areas. So, this formula needs to be looked into. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for those who are in secondary schools, certainly, it has been very expensive. In the ASAL areas, in particular, we have just come out of one of the most devastating droughts, which has not been experienced, perhaps, over the last 40 years. The backbone of the economy is destroyed. The communities there are permanently on relief food. Certainly, therefore, it is illogical for anybody to come up and say: \"Can you now start paying fees?\", when those people are being supplied with a basic necessity in the name of food. It is, therefore, incumbent upon the Government to move--- In fact, it should not be a question of creating the proposed Education Levy Fund. The Motion should be amended to provide for free education, particularly in secondary schools. I think that is the direction Kenyans are taking now. So, it is important that this Motion is amended along August 1, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2905 those lines. I had not prepared myself to amend it at this particular point in time, but that is the direction we are headed. I said that, with a bit of fine-tuning in the management of secondary schools, free education can easily be achieved hands down. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if, particularly, the issue of audit in secondary schools is tightened, I am sure that we can reduce what is now considered to be the cost of a child in secondary school by even up to 30 per cent. Once that is done, we can afford to offer free secondary school education for our children. The problem in this country is that we tend to think within conventional confines and stop there. We have no room for incisive thinking to make sure that we do things very differently. So, the thinking, which is what we should be telling the Ministry, is that we need to get them to sit down and ensure that there is free secondary education, or affordable secondary education, but the general feeling is for free secondary education. If we do not do so, as a country, we will not be doing our job. What has been happening will, certainly, exacerbate the already worsening situation of inequalities within this country, which in 1975 had 10 millionaires and 10 million beggars. Now, it has 30 millionaires and 35 million beggars. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, therefore, the most fundamental thing to offer to our children is education. When the majority of Kenyans do not have access to education, certainly, the gap between the rich and the poor will widen permanently. It is only the instruments of Government that can come in and change that scenario. Mr. Temporary Deputy Sir, because of dropouts and lack of access to education, we still keep on talking about adult education. We try to address the symptoms by way of adults who have not gone to school. We teach them and spend some money rather than addressing the root cause of the problem. That is to have free primary education and free secondary education. If we can afford it, there is nothing that can stop us from making university education free. That is what this country needs. This country cannot afford that. But if you can afford, then it is okay. But if you cannot afford, it is our priority. That is why we tend to spend a lot of money in the Ministry of Education as opposed to other areas. So, Government intervention is a must in this instant. Therefore, we have no option other than going that direction. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we must have seen that in a number of secondary schools, there are certificates that are being withheld due to students' inability to pay fees. There is a more serious problem than the certificates being held there. That is because even the quality or the grade of that certificate is very low. Most of those students are out of the schools most of the time, trying to look for school fees. We have, time and again, made pronouncement which have not been implemented. We keep on saying that the students should not be sent away. Parents should make arrangements with the schools. But that is not workable because the schools also need money to feed those students. So, most of those students are just in school by name. Most of the time, they are out there at home looking for fees. Therefore, they have less time to learn. After the four years, what happens? At the end of the day, we have students with very low grades like D and D+. Already, the parents would have exhausted the little resources that they have. Those children go back home and stays there because with grade D, there is, perhaps, very little that you can do. The polytechnics are gone and there is nothing really that provides for that. With those few remarks, I beg to second this Motion."
}