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{
    "id": 671025,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/671025/?format=api",
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    "content": "“Every County Education Board shall consist of a chairperson and 17 other persons appointed by the Cabinet Secretary---“ I have a problem with the numbers. A County Education Board of 18 members including the chairperson is a bloated committee for them to transact any meaningful business. We can reduce to a functional figure to enable this board to transact business. However, I have an even bigger problem with the qualification; the section on qualification that is Clause 4(3) says:- “All members of the County Education Board shall have a minimum qualification of secondary education certificate”. Mr. Temporary Speaker Sir, if you need people who are going to be role models to these children in these schools, and you are talking about a County Education Board whose functions include policy formulation, what kind of policy formulation can possibly come from a secondary school graduate? The qualification is not even given. It could be somebody with grade D-Minus or an E. If you are talking about the education sector, you must be able to create a professional board that can able to undertake the responsibilities that have been assigned to them. The minimum qualification should be at least a university degree and somebody who the children in primary and secondary school can look up to as their role model. Otherwise, having people who just graduated from Form Four and you are not even stating what kind of grade they achieved, that will be taking the qualifications too low. The function and mandate given to this County Education Board is quite elaborate. I want to pick just a few. Clause 3(1) (g) says:- “Vet nominees for the board of management members and managers for private institutions” If you go to the functions assigned to the Sub County Education Board, it gives a function that appears to be a bit contradictory. It says:- “To nominate board of management, members of private institutions”. I do not think that that function of nominating should be given to a Sub-County Education Board because private schools are owned by individuals. We can only talk about vetting. The responsibility of vetting and regulating should be given to the County Education Board but the actual function of nominating can be left to the owners of those schools. Mr. Temporary Speaker Sir, we also need to ensure that we do not over-legislate and push ourselves to dictating, especially to private institutions. The required minimum standards in terms of qualification for those managers and directors of private institutions should be left at that, and then the County Education Board can do the vetting. The other issue is to ensure that if children are going to achieve meaningful, effective and proper education within primary and secondary schools, the schools must have the necessary facilities. If you look at one of the functions which I appreciate is very important, a function given to the Sub-County Education Board is to generate a priority list of the public schools with infrastructural challenges within the sub-county. If you go to a number of our schools, you will find a school that has no library or laboratory but when given an opportunity, the school proceeds to buy a school bus. The priorities within our public schools, whether in primary or secondary are sometimes 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"
}