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"id": 238797,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Karaba",
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"legal_name": "Daniel Dickson Karaba",
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"content": "Thank you very much, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I rise to support the Minister for successfully tabling the Motion. I would also like to thank the officers in charge of the Ministry for steering the Ministry to greater heights since the NARC Government took over in 2003. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, what we see as the Ministry of Education is, to a very great extent, a contradiction of principles and values. What I see and what many hon. Members here see is that, when the NARC Government took over, they announced immediately that there will be free primary education, which we can say to a very great extent is a blessing to many people. But it is a blessing in disguise when it is taken further, in the sense that 7.2 million kids are now in school, up from, maybe, 5 million or 6 million before. We are talking of an additional number of students of about two million. If we worked that out mathematically, you realize that if every teacher has to handle a class of 40 students, and if you divided the total increase of students by 40, we are talking about an additional number of teachers to the tune of 30,000. That has not happened and we continue talking about quality education! There is a belief that when a teacher is teaching in a class, he is the final person. That is not true. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my Committee has visited quite a number of schools in this country. We did not believe our eyes when we visited a school in Busia Town, where we found a teacher handling a class of 232 students. That is true, we confirmed that there was only one teacher for that class. So, if the teachers are going to be subjected to this kind of mental harassment, this will translate into poor quality education. Considering that the Ministry of Education is a key Ministry and that it is a service Ministry, we need to think about the recruitment of teachers, and not the replacement of teachers, the way it is done these days. We need to have a policy of recruiting enough teachers to cope with the increased number of students currently. Even before the free primary education was introduced, the teacher-student ratio was still not uniform. The number of teachers then was still few compared to the number of students. Why do we then imagine that, today, when we have an increase of more than two million students, and we have not employed more teachers, we will have quality education? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, down the line, these pupils sit for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), and they move on to secondary schools. What is most amazing is that, when they get to Form 1, the students who would have benefitted from free primary education are made to pay school fees. That is where one of the problems lies, because to a very great extent, we have a very big drop-out rate. The Minister should even have told us that the number of secondary schools in the country is not commensurate with the increased number of students translating to secondary schools after completion of their primary school studies. We still have very few secondary schools and even the secondary school teachers are not adequate. If we want to talk about quality education, we need to address the shortage of teachers as a national crisis. Unless we do that, we are cheating ourselves. That is the reason why we are losing a lot of money by our students going across the border. There are many Kenyan students studying in Uganda, and they are doing so because of the inequality of opportunities that we have in Kenya. Why can we not arrest the number of students going to Uganda and spend the same amount of money to put up secondary schools in our country? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, what is even worse is that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) does not post teachers to schools funded by the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). Of course, the CDF can put up a school, but the TSC has come up with a rule that, unless that school has more than 100 students, then they will not deploy teachers there. How on earth can you start a new school and then, all of a sudden, you have 100 students in order to 3036 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 18, 2006 warrant you to get a teacher from the TSC? It is not possible! Therefore, this is a contradiction in policy and the Ministry should encourage the construction of more secondary schools in the country and, for that matter, provide more teachers. Since they cannot afford to provide teachers, we are asking the Ministry to go back to the drawing board and come up with a policy of teacher recruitment in relation to the teacher-student ratio. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also have very many poor orphans and I am happy that the Minister has talked about school bursaries. What about those orphans who cannot even afford to pay the difference after being given the said bursary? We have very many orphans who were rendered in that state because of, maybe, parents dying out of HIV/AIDS and related diseases. Where will an orphan get the difference to enable him clear his fee balance? That is the other reason why, just the other day, we had passed a Motion asking the Government to make sure that they will pay the total amount of fees for that kid who cannot afford to pay the balance of the bursary. I hope this will happen. We also need to plan ahead. As we talk about free primary education, let us also talk about what will happen when these kids will get to our universities. You realize that, right now, the cut- off points to join public universities is a B plus. This is a very high grade, going by what happens to our students. It is very frustrating, because if a student gets that grade and he cannot join a public university, what else would we say he has not done? It is a very frustrating grade. A student may get it, but still not qualify to join any public university. This is because of the few admission vacancies that we have. The admission to the universities is pegged on bed capacity. Why can we not abolish this system of admission, so that we have more students admitted to universities? We may even make them day scholars, so that the bed capacity does not become an issue to be considered during admission. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, a teacher in Kenya is a very demotivated person. This is a person who works from morning to evening in a very congested classroom and other harsh conditions, yet his salary is meagre. Could we, therefore, motivate teachers by offering them better remuneration? By doing so, they will work even harder. We must be wary of the teachers' threat to go on strike unless their pay package is implemented. We should take it seriously because the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) exams will start from next Monday. Unless we are careful, we will land into problems just like the way we did in 2001. It was not possible even to supervise examinations because of lack of teachers, due to the same industrial problem. I would, therefore, urge the Government to consider their plight to avert the strike. I also realise that more money has been allocated to the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB). However, why do we give loans to students in private universities, but not to those undertaking parallel programmes? It is only unfortunate that those students undertaking parallel programmes could not have joined the regular programmes because of their choices. So, we should not consider them as rich students who are not entitled to loans. After all, they are also taxpayers. We need to give them the HELB loans, much as we give those in private universities. If this is done, we will have more students joining our universities. As we plan to industrialise by the year 2020, we will have enough personnel in our country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those few remarks, I beg to support."
}