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{
    "id": 438429,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/438429/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 128,
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    "content": "Nonetheless, let us look at the reality today in the Republic of Kenya. We have both private and public schools. Private schools are run in various ways; some are day schools, others are boarding schools and of course, the cost of running these schools is born by the parents of the students that attend these schools. Quite often, these schools are very generous. When you do not complete your fees, they allow you to continue attending the school hoping that by the time you are finishing the school, you have actually fulfilled your obligation of paying the cost of attending the school. But there are circumstances where this does not happen and this is where this regulation becomes rather tenuous. What do you do to a private school which must run its institution and which is also interested that the students attending that school graduate and get certificates? In public schools, it is different because this is a public institution and the Government can actually afford to absorb the debts as they do in hospitals. In health facilities, there is what we call writing off the debt. Now, both education and health are social services really, in the development and sustenance of human resources and, therefore, you can compare patients in a hospital to students in a school. Patients need to be cured and to leave the institution whereas the students need to be taught and to graduate. So, it is counter-productive when they have now been taught and they need to graduate for them either not to graduate or to retain them there. The logic of this argument is that in the final analysis when all is said and done, there must be a much better and imaginative way of public financing of our educational health services in this country. It is not rocket science. In fact, I had a young man who worked out a very good proposal for financing education in this country which would not have cost the Government any more. The only thing it would have done is that it would have made financing much more certain, efficient and definite. I am quite sure that if the Ministry of Education was interested in finding a way of financing education other than the traditional one we have used since Independence of paying fees, that would be available and that is why I was referring to Sen. Musila’s experience as a Provincial Commissioner. If the problems that he faced as a Provincial Commissioner many years ago are still there in the same way, it means that we are not imaginative at all in this nation. Madam Temporary Speaker, it is only spiders that make their webs in the same way year- in, year-out. Since no human being can make a web as complicated as a spider’s, of course, we think that spiders are very clever. But the spiders have been making these webs in the same way from time immemorial. The difference between us and the spiders is that we are innovative and inventive. Therefore, if we have had this problem for so long and up to now, we have not been innovative and finding better ways of financing education, there is something wrong with us. I think that the end of dealing with this problem in the final analysis is to establish a financing mechanism for our schools based on two things; one, on insurance, pooled resources managed by banks and so on where parents and the Government put in money ahead of time and no matter how many students a family is going to have in school, provided you are an investor in this education fund, once your children start going to school, they will be financed. It is the same principle as insurance. You insure your health not because you know that tomorrow you are 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."
}