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{
    "id": 401277,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/401277/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 330,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Zani",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13119,
        "legal_name": "Agnes Zani",
        "slug": "agnes-zani"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to support this Motion. I think this Motion really portrays a serious sad state of our educational system. We know that in any economy, education is the basis for development of that country. You cannot get it right from top to bottom. This is one thing Kenyans have not yet as a sector agreed upon in terms of the way forward and what to do. You must get it right from the bottom and then you plan well. Fifty years after Independence, it is not that the whole realm of education is something new for us. I just cannot fathom why ECD and education has been a sector that has been ignored for so long while realizing the implications that it has that have been well brought out by Sen. Karaba in terms of the development of the child right from the word “go”. Starting with the issue of who becomes a teacher and how they become a teacher: Do we vet teachers, especially those who will be so instrumental in shaping up the minds of the young Kenyans? I think that nobody has bothered to do this. In Kenya you just apply for any job, yet this sector is so key and crucial that people, first of all, have to make a decision of where to go to. Unfortunately, most of the time the status of those who end up teaching, it is hierarchical right from university teaching to pre-primary education, seems to change across the hierarchy. As time goes on, you will find that those people who really end up in the teaching profession, especially at the early levels, are those who did not have an interest at all. They ended up teaching because they chose to do law and they did not qualify for that, but there was an option called teaching. They went into it as unprepared and unmotivated as anybody. But there are those few who are really interested. I think that it is very important to have a system of vetting, first and foremost, to ensure that those who are coming for training have a sense of realization that this is what they have been called to do or want to do. This is because the work that they do is very critical. Parents leave their children as young as two and a half years old with the teacher to begin to be taught. We do not know the calibre of the people who are teaching them or whether they are well trained or interested in their teaching. We do not know whether they pull their noses and ears when they are not listening or finding ways of motivating them. As Sen. Karaba said when he was moving this Motion, this will determine whether their trajectory educationally will really take them to the height of where it should go to. Otherwise, that motivation might be killed and we will have ourselves and our systems to blame. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I think that it is really unfortunate that even when it comes to making the right choices, in terms of training, especially teachers for pre- primary education, we have failed by not really putting in place structures and systems to ensure that we get the best of the best who really want to do it. It is amazing that in other countries where that sort of emphasis has been put, primary and pre-primary education is 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"
}