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"speaker_name": "Mr. Musila",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I do not want to continue along that line because little did hon. Katuku know that he is arguing with a man who is well versed with the Standing Orders. I want to start by stating the necessity for the Government to introduce free pre-primary education. This has been said and we even approved a Sessional Paper here on this issue. When the Minister stands to respond, I would like him to tell Kenyans exactly when we are going to have free pre-primary education in the country. We should have free education from pre-primary upwards. A lot has been said about the free primary education. We are always grateful. We commend the Government for this. Many times, hon. Members have alluded to the fact that the free primary education is of very low quality. There are no teachers. You will find a school of eight classes with only five teachers. We have classes of not less than 100 pupils who are supposed to be taught by one teacher. Let us not keep on singing about the free primary education which is of very low quality. We should improve the quality of the free primary education and I am sure Kenyans will appreciate the programme more. The same thing applies to secondary education. The Ministry of Education is in great shortage of secondary school teachers. For example, in Mwingi District, we have a shortage of over 1,000 primary school teachers and more than 300 secondary school teachers. At the end of the year, examinations are done and schools are classified according to their performance. The majority of the schools are in difficult areas where there are no teachers. So, how do you classify the performance of schools which have teachers together with those schools which have no teachers? We should be serious. The Ministry should equitably distribute teachers to all the schools in this country. Then it will have a basis of comparing the performance of the schools. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the weakest points in the Ministry of Education is supervision. There are schools which go for years without seeing an inspector going to inspect the performance of the teachers. Perhaps, the teachers that hon. Katuku was alluding to have been forgotten in those schools. No inspector goes to those schools. There is the issue of District Education Officers (DEO) not being able to adequately have authority over secondary education. In 3034 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 18, 2006 secondary schools, we are told that Provincial Education Officers (PEOs) have the last say. The DEOs have to refer to the PDEs with regard to everything that takes place in secondary schools. Some DEOs are junior to principals of secondary schools. They have no authority to order the principals of secondary schools to do anything. Therefore, they have to rely on the PEOs. I would like to propose that, as a matter of policy, the Government should upgrade DEOs, so that they are responsible for education matters throughout the districts. They should not just be concentrating on primary education. The DEOs have no authority over secondary schools and they have to refer cases to the PEOs. We will have improved supervision if we gave the DEOs the authority to supervise secondary education and upgrade their status, so that they are senior than the heads of secondary schools. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when the Minister was presenting his Vote, he said that the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) is going to receive close to Kshs370 million. The KNEC is charged with the responsibility of testing students throughout the country. When this is done, it is supposed to release the results of the examinations to the candidates. Eventually, KNEC is supposed to release the certificates to the students, so that the students can confirm that they sat for the examinations and attained the various grades. However, KNEC has abdicated its responsibility. Currently, KNEC delivers the results and the certificates to the schools where the students sat for the examinations. The principals of those schools take these certificates as lien for unpaid school fees. I have been advised that this is illegal. I would like to suggest that KNEC, having received examination fees from students and having provided the examination papers and invigilated properly, should in the future, send the results and the certificates directly to the students. This happens in other countries. The business of head teachers retaining the results and certificates of students from poor families must be stopped. The Minister for Education is presiding over one of the biggest scandals in the land. As we speak, over 1 million students left school and their result-slips and certificates are held by the schools. I have raised this issue before on the Floor of this House. Most of these students are orphans. Others are from very poor families and their parents cannot afford a meal. How long is it going to take for the Minister to realize that it makes no sense to punish students by keeping their certificates on account of not paying school fees? Why can the principals not chase after the parents of those kids for the fees arrears? Why can the Government not provide funds to the schools so that they can release these certificates? I know that the Minister will come here and say: \"It is a lot of money; it is Kshs10 billion\" et cetera . But I have said it before, we have written off debts for rich people who owed the Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC). Recently, we even gave money to a private company; Uchumi Supermarkets, because we did not want it to go under. Why do we not want Uchumi Supermarkets and the Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC) to go under? Why do we not want the coffee sector to suffer? Why do we not want the AFC farmers to suffer? And we do not care about those poor kids who are languishing in their homes in poverty because they cannot look for jobs since they have no result-slips and certificates."
}