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    "id": 561748,
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    "content": "university level, we are talking about counties beginning to move from general to more specific education. For example, universities in Kericho County can emphasize on tea production and processing. Those counties at the coast can emphasize on marine science. This can be inculcated right from the beginning. That way, we can have a more directed educational goal for the various students. There is also need to ensure and recognize parents and families who will be the primary care givers. We need also to recognise the role of the community. We, as a committee, when we went to the various counties, we talked to members of the Parents Teachers Associations (PTAs). They wanted to understand what role they will play in this programme. We were also talking about feeding programmes so that parents can still be engaged. They can decide how they we will feed the children. We must ensure that they are safe and their nutritional needs are taken care of. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, more important is the values of equality, equity and non discrimination, especially in early childhood education. Children in all categories should be catered for so that there is no discrimination based on ethnicity. We should have specific centres targeting specific groups or children from particular religious backgrounds. The curriculum should not be based on any religion. We should have a curriculum that is holistic and non-discriminatory. Children should be left to grow, based on family values and not driven by a particular agenda. More important is the principle of accountability through appropriate developmental methods, for example, where you have children being gauged in terms of their development and what they are doing from the early stages. At the end of the day, a child will be tested on cognitive skills, sensory motor qualities, reading abilities, etcetera . I have been to a school where there is a card that is given to parents at the end of the day that details what the child was able to do for that day. That kind of record keeping is very important. Part II addresses the right to early childhood education. This is a right for everybody and it ensures availability and accessibility of early childhood centres. This will be a responsibility for county governments. The only question of concern that arose in the committee is that in many schools where there has not been an ECD centre, we find a situation where there is a primary school well structured. However, the idea of coming up with another ECD centre within it becomes difficult because the focus then is on the primary and the whole issue of who will manage it. If you are going to have PTAs on board, are you going to split them so that we have one at the primary level and another at the secondary level? The advice we gave to the various schools is that, at the end of the day, there must not be a situation where the ECD is actually whitewashed by the primary level. We went to counties where we have the ECD centres away from the primary schools. We looked at that specific centre in trying to gauge their needs. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are also various obligations that the county is given in this particular Bill. Clause 6 deals with how counties are going to ensure that this right is kept into place. Each county government will have certain basic principles to be put into place to ensure free and compulsory early childhood education. They will also 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."
}