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{
    "id": 717908,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/717908/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 219,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Okoth",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 12482,
        "legal_name": "Kenneth Odhiambo Okoth",
        "slug": "kenneth-odhiambo-okoth"
    },
    "content": "a lot of the projects much faster. The language is clarified and the framework of our 47 county governments working with the national Government is important. As I comment on this Public Private Partnership Bill, I am excited. Everybody knows that my focus and passion as a leader in this country is the issue of education. In fact, in Kibra, my policy is elimu kwanza, education first. Sometimes I wish we could get public private partners to come in and help us to earn and scale up the schools and the quality of the facilities available. We have some government schools that need repair or that have space that we could run through public private partnerships. In Nigeria and Liberia the governments of Lagos City and Liberia under President Sirleaf embarked on pilot programmes where they are doing a public private partnership for basic education – primary school and secondary school. In this era where we have a very active, creative and foresighted Cabinet Secretary for Education in the name of Dr. Matiang’i, we really need to look and see. Looking at the Basic Education Bill, it provides for public schools, private schools and then it talks about Alternative Provision of Basic Education and Training (APBET). These were the former non-formal schools or informal schools. APBET is a good point but it is not good enough. We need to go into the basic definition and say that there shall be three types of schools: public schools in Kenya, private schools in Kenya and public private partnership schools in Kenya, where the Government can build a school and invite a private operator to run the school or where a private operator can build the school and invite the Government to run programmes in that school. We have taken a very bold step in this direction in issues of higher education. You will remember a few months ago, the President and the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) enrolled 10,000 young people in private universities under Government scholarship. This is a public private partnership where investors can invest in the Mt. Kenya University School of Medicine, the Riara University Law School, the Stathmore University School of Business or the Daystar University School of Communication. Young people can have a choice of a programme that is tailored, important and useful for them and get the Government funding to go to a private university. The investors have built the capacity, the range of choice and spared the Government having to build those universities but giving the students a choice to go to those universities with the benefit of public funding which they can repay later. We need to look carefully at this and see across our nation where primary schools and secondary schools are suffering or are absent in urban areas in places like Mukuru and Kibra where you do not have enough Government schools. How can we get the people who are already providing public education as public good at the basic level when we talk as a country of sustainable development goals (SDGs)? We used to talk of millennium development goals (MDGs). When we think of those things, where is the role of the private sector in free primary education as a right in our Constitution; as a commitment in Vision 2030; and as a global commitment and an SDG? My argument is that we should have partners like Bridge International which is one of the companies that has a lot of schools in Kenya. They have done market research in some places where they can offer, at a very low cost, education that is technology supported, outcome-based and focused. Their children pass KCPE very well. We really need to look at that model because we are talking about our public education system where a lot of students are not passing in the public school. We need innovation and competition and we should involve public private partnerships in the education sector. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}