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{
    "id": 670994,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/670994/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 264,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Clause 14 amends Section 95 of the Basic Education Act. This section is about the rules. The Cabinet Sectary (CS) for Education may make rules to implement the Basic Education Act. If you look at the powers that are provided for the CS, they are wide and swopping powers good enough because we need rules on issues to do with discipline. At the moment right now, there is debate and I heard the veteran teacher of Geography, now Senator for Kirinyaga, participating in issues to do with the discipline in schools and saying that we need to reintroduce corporal punishment. Of course, I disagree with him but I also respect that view from him and other Kenyans who think that we should cane our children to improve on their discipline. Madam Temporary Speaker, the CS, therefore, has wide powers to make rules on discipline and issues of school management. This will help us have less of what we have seen in the past three years where you have heard CSs making roadside declarations and issuing orders on some street corner. I am not implying any particular CS. Of course I am very happy with what Prof. Kaimenyi did and even the current CS, Dr. Fred Matiang’i. They are trying their best but this provision will help them. Whatever regulation they make for the implementation of the Basic Education Act must be within the law. However, because they have wide powers to make those regulations, the stakeholders must be consulted and be part of those regulations. This is what this Clause 14 is doing; to amend Section 95 of the Basic Education Act. When the CS responsible for Education makes any regulations for implementing the Basic Education Act especially on matters of curriculum, discipline in schools, pastoral programmes and those kind of issues, there is a new requirement there that they must consult the relevant sponsors. If you are making regulations touching on pastoral programmes, I see no reason why the church sponsoring the school should not have a view. If it is a Muslim institution, I see no reason why the leadership of the Muslim faith should not have a voice because pastoral programmes are religious in nature and the Government has no capacity to determine content of religious programmes such as pastoral programmes. So, the CS must make those regulations in consultation with the relevant sponsors but only with regard to regulations touching on integration of madrassa and pastoral instructions integrating them into the formal education system and related matters. Madam Temporary Speaker, therefore, this Amendment Bill has been the subject of widespread, intensive and protracted consultations between the Government and stakeholders. Particularly, I know of the Kenya Catholic Bishops Episcopal Conference, the Evangelical Fellowship of Kenya as well as the Muslim organisations that deal with the education matters and they have been following them up. They were to my office as late as last week. They have traced this Bill from the National Assembly to this House. The Government is satisfied with the recommended changes. I have said that some of the changes have come from stakeholders. Others have come from the Government to strengthen its obligations to provide free and compulsory basic education up to Form Four level. My desire as a Kenyan and as a parent is that in the foreseeable future, it should be possible for a child to go to a nursery school and study for free up to secondary school. In the not so distant future, university education should also be free. That is possible and it can be planned. 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"
}