Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 515338,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/515338/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 201,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, it is true that we are not of equal capacity. However, when schools are also not of equal capacity in terms of facilities, students will be disadvantaged. The equipment and facilities that I found in Kahuhia Girls were not found in Iyego Secondary School. That was a fact. However, I want us to look at it in a different angle. I have a problem with making them to be on the same level as county schools. We need to explore more. I want us to look at the fundamental issues in our education system. Out of the total number of candidates who sat for KCPE, we are very sure that 192,000 children will not join secondary schools. We are an interesting country because we actually think that it is okay. For the last five years, we have been having such a high drop-out rate and hemorrhage from primary schools to high schools. Almost 200,000 children do not join secondary schools. We have bigger problems than the categorization of schools. Are we telling a 14 or 16 years old, that they have failed and they cannot go on with their education? When the former President Kibaki took over power in 2003, the one thing that I was hoping for was universal secondary school. The Government made an attempt, but we have still not achieved that to date. It was only this year that we were given statistics, that almost 200,000 pupils will not join high schools. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I want to agree with most of the other Members who have spoken before, including yourself, in terms of how these schools had been classified and where they were. They were not distributed equally in the country for whatever reasons; political or otherwise. I did not manage to go to a national school, but I went to a good school. I know that most students strive to go to a national school because they are assured of getting good facilities that will make them pass their examination and join universities. When you visit the district schools in the counties in different parts of this country, their facilities are quite below par. Some actually see microscopes for the first time when they are doing their KCSE biology exams, yet they are sitting for the same examination. So, in terms of equalization, I agree that we have a problem because we do not have schools with libraries and book stores in some schools. The distribution of teachers is very skewed and negatively so to the district and lower cadre schools, as has been explained by Sen. (Dr.) Zani. You will find some schools where a teacher even has two or four free hours because there are enough teachers. However, in some other schools, even the headteacher has to go to class, which is against the law and policy. This is because they need to bridge that gap that has been left by lack of enough teachers. Recently, I have been on the fore front in the pushing to implement the guidelines that were given by the Kilemi Mwiria led team in terms of guidelines for fees. About 100,000 teachers have been employed by parents. Even in the local schools that I know, you will find that there are four teachers employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) while double that number are employed by parents or boards of management. They are paid very poorly and that says a lot about their qualification. It lowers what exactly goes on in those schools because they cannot perform at the level of the TSC teachers. So, it ends up that the school does not perform well. However, it is not a problem of the name; provincial or district--- 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."
}