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{
    "id": 515283,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/515283/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 146,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Zani",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13119,
        "legal_name": "Agnes Zani",
        "slug": "agnes-zani"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to move:- THAT, aware that the prime purpose of devolution in Kenya is to decentralize and transfer functions, resources and power to the county level of government in order to promote participatory democracy and sustainable development for the benefit of all Kenyans, concerned that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology still upholds the historical classification of schools into national, county and district schools; concerned that such categorization has implication in terms of funding, administration and eventually academic performance and that it limits choices and admissions of students to Form One, appreciating that in the current devolved system of government, counties will play a key role in the educational outcomes of their schools, the Senate calls upon the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to take immediate action to review the categorization of public secondary schools and to classify all of them as county schools in order to ensure equity in resource allocation and guarantee quality education for all. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the whole nexus of this Motion is to change a practice that has been prevalent in this country; the schools are categorized and that has been historical. Before Independence, secondary schools would be known to be for Europeans, Asians and others for Africans. The categorization of these schools ensured that certain schools became very prominent as result of being listed as schools for certain specific people. As a result of colonization, Lenana School was known as the Duke of Yoke; Nairobi School was known as the Prince of Wales; Kenya High was known as European Girls and so on. Most of the provincial schools at that time were for Asians and then we also had schools for Africans. The whole issue of school categorization has been historical. Before Independence, there was that categorization of European, Asian or African and that automatically has implications in terms of quality of education, type of schools and what a student would achieve from that school. After Independence that system went into the school orientation and classification and that has not changed much since 1963. From that point, European Schools became national schools, Asian schools became provincial schools and the African schools became district schools. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, categorization itself is not a problem. The only problem is that when you have any form of categorization, it comes with very many implications in terms of quality and type of school. In the Kenyan system, we have national, provincial, district and private schools. With devolution, most of the schools that were 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."
}