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"id": 223503,
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"speaker_name": "Capt. Nakitare",
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"legal_name": "Davis Wafula Nakitare",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this chance to contribute on this Motion. I also thank Mr. Oloo-Aringo for introducing the Motion in this House. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, education in our country needs a total overhaul. There is a lot of overlap in the education system. This has created enormous lapses in grading students. When you look at children from primary schools sitting comprehensive examination and then we abolished the other examination after standard eight, this created a very big gap in education. In the past, a form six student went directly to the university. They forgot that there are other colleges. In this country, when we talk about polytechnics, we do not have the language to emphasise this. Diploma courses are taken in colleges. When you go outside this country, students are very proud to say they are in college, university or elementary school. Therefore, Mr. Oloo-Aringo's Motion is a conduit for smooth education. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when we look at provision of free education, it is a relief to parents. It is not free because the parents still pay taxes and contribute to the budget. This allows the Government to allocate money. It is the Government which should come up with a method of budgeting properly, but as we say, the Government should take a census of pregnant women who will bear children tomorrow, so that they can plan ahead, having known how many children are going to be in Standard One and how many are going to finish Standard Eight. That will also enable them to know how many students need to go to colleges and universities. There has been a lot of emphasis about room space in the universities. This is a burden. We have not been able to open doors for private accommodation for university students. That is where the Government is going to get into trouble with this populous country. The population explosion in Kenya is horrendous. I do not think that our Government is doing proper planning for our youths because we look at them like a flowing river. It is not fair to have 400,000 pupils sitting the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) in one year. This year it was 400,000 pupils and next year it will be 500,000 and the number continues to increase. Where shall we find the top cream which goes to university? There are those students who should join middle level colleges for diploma courses. That is why you find teachers stuck at the tertiary level, because they may have gone half-way to school; he or she was not able to complete schooling because of financial constraints. That was not a short-cut because education has no boundaries. In any case, this particular teacher has to divide his salary between education and looking after his large family in the home. If we had free education, that particular person would have gone to school. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we do not have a proper career system in this country. A child goes to school, finishes Form Four and does not know his future. Most of us who did Cambridge School Certificate had colleges to go to. There was Egerton College where I went and pursued my agricultural engineering course and got married late because I pursued further May 2, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1053 education in other areas. Presently, a Form Four graduate is too young to be exposed to the world. As the saying goes: \"You will be taught by the world.\" You are exposing that Form Four graduate into a situation where he will be forced to get married before he is 25 years old. We should set smooth education standards. I have never understood the purpose of the 8-4-4 system of education. It beats me. I have never known why we did not maintain the 12-year system of education in this country, because it was a delaying factor for a person to mature. By the time we went to university, we were grown up and we could make decisions. A child at this time who is doing, for example, a Phd degree is unemployable because he or she cannot even face the panel of interviewers. He or she looks inferior and does not even have the personality. Therefore, we should create a system which gives relief to the parents because they are over-burdened, not that they have big families, but the financial constraints are enormous. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let us look at development. Development comes with proper planning. The Ministry of Planning and National Development should not wait for ten years in order to give us a population census. Planning must be based on a blue-print for a population census done every five years. In fact, I am surprised that international organisations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank know our population more than we ourselves know. Therefore, they work out a system where they can force us to borrow money from them with conditions, and yet, we do not have the purchasing power. We do not have proper planning. We had teacher training colleges where we refined teachers to teach in primary and secondary schools. It is embarrassing that a person who pursues a doctor of philosophy (PHD) degree will be above 55 years of age. When he comes back home with all those degrees, he is told to retire. What a system we have! This Motion is actually a warning to Kenyans of tomorrow. Let us look at Kenya 50 years from now. We must not look at Kenya with the free primary education of yesterday, because tomorrow we are going to have a flux; we are going to be swamped by literally lowly educated people in this country, who will be unemployable for lack of skills. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}