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{
    "id": 817801,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/817801/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 381,
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    "content": "procurement, which is becoming a lucrative business of late in this country. So we need to support and enhance this issue. Recently, after we had these problems, as the regional Members of Parliament, we went and talked to the students and most of them have decided that they want to join the education sector. I would like the people of the target counties to reflect on our society’s attitude towards the education sector, especially the lack of interest, as I said earlier. In the past, there has been dismal performance in these regions. In 2017, Wajir County’s mean grade was 3.1which is a D grade. We only had 58 candidates attaining C plus which translates to two per cent of the candidates who sat for the exam. You can imagine the problems in these areas. When you look at it subject by subject, there was only one student from one school called Ahmed Liban who scored an A minus in 2017 in the whole of Wajir County. Mathematics and Kiswahili were the worst with a mean grade of 1.7. Kiswahili is one of the languages needed for the courses to be studied and that includes mathematics.So, one can imagine how these people perform when it comes to sciences. Enrolment for science subjects in those areas is also very poor. Out of the six sub counties in Wajir County, there were no Physics candidates in two sub counties. In the remaining four, we had one each. Therefore, you can imagine what we expect from such areas. The highlight is, on the issue of the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) which is standard eight, four students out of a total of over 5,000 had 400 marks and above. All the others were below that and most of them had 200 marks and below. What do you expect of such areas when we continue with this? We have a lot of problems in those areas. This is not something that started recently and, therefore, for education in Northern Kenya to improve, we might require something like what the Americans did for Germany; the Marshall Plan, which will enhance resource allocation in those areas for us to have infrastructure; schools, classrooms, science laboratories, computer laboratories and dormitories. This is because most of the residents are nomadic and require those boarding schools. There are some that are already there but the numbers are not sufficient. We will also need to encourage the residents to try and do skilled manpower for they are not good at that. In that case, we possibly need the counties and the national Government to increase the number of technical training institutes in these areas. On the issue of insecurity, we know what is happening in these areas of late due to the Al-Shabaab menace. If we do not take care of these students, most of them will join the Al-Shabaab and that will not be helpful to this country. We already have problems and most of them are failures, they cannot manage. If you go to most universities in Nairobi, you will see students from the northern part but you should know that most of them are residents of Nairobi and its environs. They are those children whose parents are capable of paying for private education. Most of them are admitted for parallel courses. The locals, from poor families, cannot manage to come to Nairobi so they stay down there with nothing to do. Some of them join Al-Shabaab while others get into substance abuse such as miraa and bhang.In the end, we will have citizens who will not be of use to this country. 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."
}