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"id": 230530,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/230530/?format=api",
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Kajwang",
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"speaker": {
"id": 164,
"legal_name": "Gerald Otieno Kajwang",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I will talk about three aspects regarding the 8-4-4 System of Education that has been a disaster to a poor district like Suba, which is one the poorest districts in this country. The 8-4-4 System of Education came with another policy that states that you can only admit 15 per cent of the students from outside your district. This means that 85 per cent of the students who qualify to join secondary schools must be admitted in the secondary schools in their home districts. The policy also said that Kiswahili is an examinable and compulsory subject. The three policies are a disaster to Suba District. We had a chance to discuss this with the Minister for Education at another forum. I will explain this further. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is now a requirement that before you join a university for a professional degree course, you must obtain an \"A\" in all the eight or nine examinable subjects. If you get a \"C+\" out of the eight subjects, you will not get a chance to join the university. In fact, if you obtained an \"A-\", it is most likely you will not get a professional degree course. That is the damage that the 8-4-4 System of Education has done to Suba District. There is only one good school in Suba District where I learnt. That is Mbita High School. If the school is very lucky, it gets two, three or four students who have scored a mean grade of \"A-\". That means that for almost 15 years no student from Suba District has been admitted to a public university to do medicine. I think there is a student from that district who has been admitted at the university to do law. There is no student who has been admitted to the university to do engineering from Suba District. This is likely to continue for I do not know how long. This is because if you get \"As\" and fail in Kiswahili, which the Suba people fail and I do not know why, you will not do a professional degree course at the university. That subject is not very relevant in medicine, law and December 6, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 4183 engineering although it is compulsory and examinable. I was not very good in Maths, but I was very good in English, History and Geography. I joined Forms V and VI and later qualified to do law. If it was a requirement that I had to get an \"A\" in Maths, I would not have qualified to be a lawyer today. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, that is the truth and the damage that we are doing to this country. Some students are so good in Maths, Physics and Chemistry, but they are not so good in History, Religious Studies and Kiswahili. You force them that unless they get \"As\" both in Maths, Physics, Religious Studies and Kiswahili they will not do professional courses. That is the damage which the 8-4-4 System of Education is doing. In those years, you could choose. If you were good in Maths and Physics, you just did Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology and became a doctor. I can tell you that the doctors who qualified with us in our time, very few of them ever did History and Religious Studies but they are doctors because they chose it and they did the entire science subjects. In this country now, you have to pass even what you do not like, even what you do not have an aptitude for in order to be a professional. It is not right. It is destroying our education system and ultimately our country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, what does it then do to the child? The child has to go through the stress of having to go to school, I think seven days a week and read up to beyond midnight daily to get an \"A\". I do not know why it is necessary. Some of us read for very few hours and joked for most of the hours, but still managed to go to university. Our children now do not joke or play but they have to read beyond midnight for seven days a week with coaching in order to get those \"As\" to go to university. It is not necessary. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I can see my time is running out so fast but let me just give you an example. The other policy that came was the rise of academies. Academies simply teach people to pass exams. If you cannot afford them, then it is too bad for you, if you come from Suba District since it is a poor district. Then there are national schools which are now target schools because you cannot afford the exorbitant fees there even if you were to qualify to go to a national school. Then there is the parallel programme which is only open to the rich. Suba people do not have a chance to go to those parallel degree courses because they do not have coffee, tea, milk or a cash crop. So, they cannot go to those parallel courses. So, if we are not careful we are going to have a country which is lopsided. It will be a country where one region seems to be excelling in education and professional courses and the other districts go down the drain. It will be a country where families continue going for professional courses while others have no chance because of the education system. I think this system was designed by certain people for certain people. We have to change. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in East Africa here, as was said by Mr. Karaba, it is a shame that a student from Kenya has to go to another school in Uganda to do two years in order to be admitted to Makerere University and he has to pay that kind of fees. I have had to pay some time for a child to go to another secondary school in Uganda in order to go to Makerere University. Why is it that we cannot do just what our neighbours are doing? We are talking of integrating East Africa into one country; a federal government, and we are not even harmonising our education system. When I was expelled from Nairobi University in my third year, I went to Makerere University and my credits were transferred and I did not have to do second year again. I went and did my third year and finished my degree course. You cannot do it now because the education system in Nairobi University which admits people after Form Four is very different from Dar-es- Salaam and Makerere universities. This means that a student from Nairobi University who wants to continue his studies in Makerere University cannot have his credits transferred. He will have to start afresh. Why are we punishing our country? Why are we an island in a continent where everybody is training people in one harmonised education system? 4184 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES December 6, 2006 Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we had a Sessional Paper here sometimes back, I think two years ago, and we seemed to have been zeroing in on this 8-4-4 System of Education but nobody had the courage to deal with it then. It is unfortunate that this country is still proceeding with it. This system is killing our children with stress. It is making our children not do the courses which they always have dreamt to do. I will give you an example. My friend and our colleague, hon. Nyauchi, I was with him in one school. He was in Form Two and I was in Form One. He was very bad in Maths and I was second to him in badness in Maths but we did law. He failed Maths but went to Alliance High School from South Nyanza and came to Nairobi University and got a First Class Honours degree. If he had been forced to pass Maths, he would not have been a lawyer and would not have gotten his First Class Honours Degree from Nairobi University. Look at the kind of problems here. There was another one who is now a Professor of Mathematics at Nairobi University who did not like English but because he chose Maths, Physics and Chemistry, he is now a Professor of Maths at Nairobi University. He would not have done that if he was forced to pass English and History. So, this 8-4- 4 System of Education is bad. For that reason alone, I want to support hon. Karaba that we change our system of education. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me just add one more point before my time expires. In South Nyanza and in Nyanza generally, I think it is a matter of attitude. We were taught that Kiswahili is not a very civilised language and so we never learnt it. Now, our own teachers in primary and secondary schools do not know Kiswahili and we are not allowed to import teachers from outside to teach Kiswahili. With all those remarks, I support."
}