Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 328730,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/328730/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 433,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Ogindo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 120,
        "legal_name": "Martin Otieno Ogindo",
        "slug": "martin-ogindo"
    },
    "content": "It is important that we relook at our national curriculum. The difference between development in countries is in terms of the focus and content of their national curriculum of education. Countries like Cuba have gone a long way purely because of education. Turkey just recently took off on account of its revised focus on content on the national curriculum. It is important that we take this opportunity to get the focus and content of our curriculum once and for all. It is also very important to appreciate that education makes us what we are today. What we are today is a result of what we learnt in our formative stages. It is very important that we get our formative stages with relevant and appropriate content. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I am glad that today the Constitution says that Early Childhood Education (ECE) is a function of the county government. This has been predominantly missing in the marginalized areas and the rural areas. Today, I believe the Constitution has given it adequate focus, so that this thing can be undertaken. Today we offer Free Primary Education (FPE), but the physical facilities that we have do not favour this. We seriously need a classroom environment that facilitates learning, both physically and emotionally. It behoves us to find ways of financing the same. Most of the things that we call school infrastructure mirror into what would have been otherwise called “cowsheds”. It is very important that today we embrace information technology and make it a compulsory medium of communication right from primary education. It is important that we expose our children to ICT as early as possible if they are to make the best out of technology. The old story of teacher to student pupil ratio is with us. It is important that we look at this problem in the eye because we want to see that there is a good interaction between the pupil and the teacher. The school management committees need to be defined properly in this Act. Previously, we have had everybody becoming a member of the school management committee. I think it should be made a basic requirement that we get people who have a little understanding of education into these management boards. This is because if you have all blind people to manage a school, then they will not. If you have people who have never been to school to manage a school, they will not. So, it becomes important that certain minimum requirements be spelt out in this Bill. The other thing I must point out is in the financing of education. We need a radical shift here and we must think outside the box. In Ghana, when they wanted to make university education free, they introduced a special tax rate. I have looked at the finance part of this Bill and I have seen the various sources of finance. I think the Minister could ask his team to, maybe, think outside the box a little and find other ways of financing education. This is because if we do not finance our education then we will find it expensive financing the rest of the sectors. We need to remove education from this financing system whereby it becomes a part of a sector and then they divide the resources. We need to come up with a way of developing a tax that is specific to the education sector. For example, those who have gone to the University of Nairobi, they pay the loan. Everybody who has gone through the University of Nairobi must have gone through a secondary school, a primary school and through the ECD or pre-primary school. If we make a policy that in this country, once you are employed, you have an education levy of Kshs1,000 per month, then we will be talking about financing education in this country, over and above what the general Exchequer is giving. I want to persuade the Minister to consider that as I will also consider it, so that something can come which might crystallize into a policy that is able to finance our education sector, which is badly needed, when we come to the Third Reading. With those remarks, I support."
}