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"content": "THAT, the Senate adopts the report of the Standing Committee on Education, Information and Technology on the visits to Nyeri, Laikipia and Kirinyaga counties laid on the Table of the House on Thursday, 17th October, 2013. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the mandate of the Committee is to consider all matters related to education, training, technology, engineering, information, broadcasting and Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) issues. As that is our role, we did various visits to the counties and the first three counties that we visited were the counties of Nyeri, Laikipia and Kirinyaga. As a Committee, we coined a word for our visit: “County Oversight, Networking and Engagement (CONE). Our objectives were to favorably see the county priorities in the areas of polytechnics, Early Childhood Development (ECD), the issue of handcrafts and all the other issues which have been devolved under the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution. Our visits were meant to build networks, which is to work together and be the linkage between the Senate and the county governments since we are the protector of the devolved functions. The other role is to assess the progress made in infrastructural development by various counties; to see the preparedness of each county in order to gauge whether they are ready to take on the devolved function of education and ICT. In the first county that we visited, Kirinyaga, the good part that we saw was that, in fact, Kirinyaga was the best county in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) for the last three years; and I think that was maintained through the co-operation which is there within the community itself. Also, the County Department of Education in Kirinyaga aims at overseeing the institutional improvement of girl-child care centres as well as continued training of child care centres. The County Department of Education also offers four programmes in that county, including ECD, homecraft, polytechnics and also day care centres. The county also has a plan to establish modern youth polytechnics which are fully fledged polytechnics which even have ICT. In the appendix – I think everybody has a copy of this report – the report indicates the enrolment rates of each county, the number of both public and private ECDs available, the population of the schools, the ratio of boys and girls, and the rest. I think the report itself is very clear and it is explaining a lot. Also, the challenges that we met are that most of the educational institutions we visited in the counties lack the required facilities for the physically challenged persons because in our systems, we are not even caring for the disabled persons. For example, we could see an assembly ground which was not even friendly to those who are physically challenged. They normally use wheelchairs and they cannot even assemble there. I think access for the physically challenged should be put into consideration during development of these assemblies. Also, on the conversion and upgrading of technical training colleges to universities, the communities believe that technical institutions are the best since that is where most of the middle level ability students and those who have not qualified for universities attend training. In fact, most of them are saying that the conversion is really a challenge. There is also drug and substance abuse, especially in the county of Nyeri, where the Ministry of Education was saying that most of the boys were dropping out of The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}