HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 223492,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/223492/?format=api",
"text_counter": 244,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Oloo-Aringo",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 358,
"legal_name": "Peter Oloo Aringo",
"slug": "oloo-aringo"
},
"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I beg to move:- THAT, this House notes with appreciation the implementation of the free primary education in Kenya since 2003, and observes with regret that the majority of the pupils who sit for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination do not proceed to secondary or higher education and lack opportunity to acquire proficiency, artisan, craft and other requisite technical skills, this House therefore grants leave to introduce a Bill for an Act of Parliament to amend the Education Act, Chapter 211, Laws of Kenya, to provide for 12 years of free and compulsory elementary and secondary education for all children in Kenya. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, first of all, let me congratulate the President for his Statement yesterday; that the Government would waive fees for public secondary schools in Kenya. That was an important Statement, though it is too little and it has come too late. This is so because it simply talks about waiving school fees. It does not address, therefore, the core issues which this Motion raises. First of all, my Motion is premised on a philosophical basis that education is a human right alongside other social and economic rights such as food, housing, social security, water and so forth. So, the fundamental principle which this Motion raises is to identify the philosophical premise of education that will lead to the overhauling of the education system. Secondly, we are talking about education being both free and compulsory from Standard 1 to Form IV; 12 years of primary and secondary education being provided free to all children in Kenya. The President's Statement, therefore, did not address that one. It took the short cut of waiving school fees. It was dealing, therefore, with a very small part of the entire problem of this Motion. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, every person has a right to functional literacy. This is so vital that it gives the individual access to data and information which is necessary for personal development. It is equally important that people have functional numeracy; not just the teaching of basic arithmetic, but to enable them to read and understand data. These are vital for personal development. So, we are saying that just as water and shelter is vital for us, education is equally vital to the individual for personal development. I am trying to distinguish between education and the school systems that we operate today in Kenya. The school systems in Kenya today are operating what is like examination factories where we are producing large numbers of people and count our success in the number of those who proceed to Form I or those who proceed to the universities. They do not address at all the issue of large numbers who do not proceed to high school and who do not find accommodation anywhere else within the society. Each year, for example, we have approximately 700,000 who sit the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE). True enough, we know that about 300,000 go to high school and find places in all sorts of other small training opportunities that still exist. What about the remaining 300,000? Year in, year out, we are throwing out over 300,000 so that in every three years, we have a million Kenyans 1048 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES May 2, 2007 whose fate we do not know and nobody talks about them. If you take into account that the youth polytechnics and vocational training centres have to, a large extent collapsed, you have condemned this large percentage of our population into illiteracy. You have also denied them opportunity for self development. This is the question which I have in mind in this Motion. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the second one is about those who graduate at primary school now who are, to a large extent, between the age of 13, 14 and 15. They cannot be meaningfully employed. In fact, that would be child labour; so, they do not get employment. They do not get opportunity for additional sellable skills; like I said, proficiency, artisan, craft or technical skills for them to acquire sellable skills for self employment. So, what we have done in a society such as ours, is to condemn, therefore, large numbers of those who have graduated from primary school and who will have no opportunity but to relapse into illiteracy in our country. As I said, the premise of this Motion is that education is a human right. I have distinguished between education and school systems. The school systems that we have today, as I repeat, are simply examination factories. We are concentrating on those numbers that proceed on to universities, ignoring that large numbers will never see the university. This is probably one of our biggest problems. I must say that we spent a lot of time at the Bomas of Kenya discussing the draft Constitution. One of the things that came out of the Bomas of Kenya which was very salutary was that we were able to address what is called human rights, and the question of social and economic rights of people; and place education as one of the rights. Article 62 of that draft Constitution--- The draft Constitution was very good and I know that whatever we do in the near future, any group that will try to re-draft this Constitution will have to address the issues which we raised at the Bomas of Kenya and which had been discussed everywhere else in the country. Article 62 of that draft Constitution says as follows:- \"(i) Every person has the right to education. (ii) The State shall institute a programme to implement the right of every child to free and compulsory pre-primary and primary education and in so doing shall pay particular attention to children with special needs. The State shall take measures to make secondary school and post-secondary school available and accessible.\" So, the spirit of the Motion is already enshrined in the Bomas Constitution, which I am sure one day we shall implement in this House. However, what we are saying is that we have not yet, since the Education Act of 1968, made any changes in the philosophy of education in this country. What we have tried to do is to provide the education that we inherited from our colonial experience, in spite of the many commissions that have studied this subject and have made recommendations to the Government and to the people of this country. In fact, just to give you an example, if you take the Education Act, it does not recognise, the role which Parents Teachers Associations (PTAs) are now playing in education. They have become vital parts and machinery of our educational system yet the law does not recognise them. If we, therefore, revise this Act, it will have to accommodate the PTAs as part of our development in this area. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the purpose of this, therefore, is to provide for the overhaul of the curriculum. Let us face it! I, personally, as you know, have served in the Ministry of Education. I served for seven years but I also know that the 8-4-4 system of education did not succeed. It did not succeed because we did not provide the practical aspects of education. We did not provide facilities for workshops and laboratories, and so the practical aspect of this education was not implemented. We have continued with theoretical education where our children pass through various examinations such as KCPE and KCSE without paying attention to whether or not the education which we are giving them is relevant. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we, therefore, need to overhaul the curriculum to be May 2, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1049 able to provide what is a twin approach to education, which will provide both the practical and theoretical sides of education. The academic and practical sides of education must go hand in hand as is done in many developed countries. The reason why countries like Germany and Japan have been successful is because of their focus on vocational and technical skills. They have also made sure that practical and theory go hand in hand at all levels of education. We are talking at a time when, through initiatives of Members of Parliament, we have made a breakthrough in terms of capacity. With the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) now, it is possible for us to provide the infrastructure of education such as classrooms, laboratories, workshops and so on. With the availability of this infrastructure, we will not only be able to provide practical education, but also equipment and other tools which will enable students to benefit from this education. Therefore, among the policies I am suggesting is to overhaul the secondary education in promoting social equity through provision of education to all Kenyans. It is only at the age of 18, for example, that many people graduate from secondary school that they can now be eligible for training in our middle level colleges. So, instead of talking about, say, 10,000 people joining public universities and, perhaps, another 30,000 joining private universities, we should talk about the number of people who would join middle level colleges. To a large extent, we have actually killed not only the youth polytechnics, but also vocational institutions in the search for the 10,000 or 1,000 places in our public universities. Why is this the case? It is because we have tied university admission to bed space and that has limited the number of people who can go to our universities. We cannot tackle poverty if we do not have functionally literate people. These people can easily be secured only after we have put our children through 12 years of elementary and secondary education. However, I am not saying that this is unique to Kenya. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you know very well, because of your wide experience, that in the entire Europe, in nearly all member nations of the European Union (EU), education is both free and compulsory. In fact, in the case of Germany, it is free and compulsory all the way to the university. Indeed, it is part and parcel of the human rights of the people. The reason, for example, why the industrialised countries have made progress is because they have identified this problem and made education both free and compulsory. We know pretty well that Reports which have already been put together by various commissions in this country have recommended that we take the next bold step and create a Kenya where everybody can access 12 years of free and compulsory primary and secondary education. Indeed, we can say, without fear, that the money is available. We worked out, with our Budget Officers, how much it would cost. As you know, we now have a Budget Office with competent officers. We found out that, indeed, to implement free and compulsory secondary education, we need about Kshs20 billion. Now, that money is less than what was stolen in the Anglo \"Fleecing\" or Anglo Leasing, as you call it. If the money which was stolen in Anglo Leasing had been spent for this purpose, we would now be offering free and compulsory secondary school education to our children. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you can recall, this money is far much less than the money we lost in the Goldenberg scandal. As Kenyans, if we will stop theft and corruption, we will be able, therefore, to provide this particular basic human right of giving people education all the way, for 12 years, in primary and secondary schools. It is for this reason, therefore, that I support the Koech Report which candidly pointed out that the Education Act was not a suitable vehicle for the provision of quality education in Kenya. The Report specifically explains that the Education Act does not address the key issues of access, completion, transition and wastage at all the subsectors of education, and especially at the secondary school level. The Koech Report further pointed out that the Education Act offers no mechanism for the systematic formulation, review and monitoring of appropriate national and sectoral policies on 1050 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES May 2, 2007 education and little guidance regarding the development and management of resources from the public and private sector for quality education. All these things need to be addressed if the country's Education Act is to remain relevant to the country's educational development. Finally, there is need, therefore, to provide opportunities for all citizens to get access to secondary education by making it free. Unless this advice is taken seriously, we risk making the country proud of primary school graduates and instead becoming a shining example of failure to cope and translate the international countries commitment on matters of education. The current system, therefore, where we have to pay for secondary education has excluded the majority of poor children, including HIV/AIDS orphans. We are talking about disadvantaged and vulnerable children. These are issues that are addressed in Motions which have been passed by this House over the last one year. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, currently, therefore, there is rapid expansion in secondary schools through the CDF so that Members of Parliament can oversee the expansion of infrastructure of education. Enrolment, therefore, in secondary schools should be encouraged. This Motion would easily abolish the concept of the bursary as it is today. Bursaries are very badly handled not only by the Constituencies Development Committees (CDCs), but also by the schools themselves. If you have free and compulsory education, then you have solved one of the major problems, that is, the problem of ensuring equity in the country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I know you know very well the problems that are experienced in arid and semi-arid areas. This Motion will solve the problems in those areas. Similarly, the problem which was raised by Prof. Mango about the girl-child education would be solved. I agree with her with regard to some of the problems that girl-children have faced in this country. However, let us not discriminate between the girl-child and the boy-child. Sometimes we take gender issues too far. We must treat boys and girls equally. If this Motion is passed and the Bill is brought before this House, we will have addressed equity as well as equality of opportunities for both men and women in this country. Therefore, let us have a holistic approach by committing this country to provide free elementary and secondary education. There are several examples worldwide that I can give like the UK. In the USA, you cannot leave school until you have completed your secondary education. Indeed, we should be strict on this and insist that parents must make sure that their children go to school. When we draft the Bill, we will provide penalties so that those who do not take their children to school will be penalised for not doing so. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to thank the House for listening to me and also ask my friend, Mr. C. Kilonzo, to second this Motion."
}