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{
"id": 92843,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/92843/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Musila",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Ministry of State for Defence",
"speaker": {
"id": 94,
"legal_name": "David Musila",
"slug": "david-musila"
},
"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I stand here to support the Motion very strongly. I also want to appreciate the work done by the Minister for Education, my friend, Prof. Ongeri, and his staff. They are doing a marvelous job despite the challenges. Let me also appreciate the role that has been played by the Departmental Committee on Education, Research and Technology and its very able Chairman because I think they have done a good job. There are very many issues to do with education, but I just want to touch on a few. First, there is the shortage of teachers. I am glad that, that is now being addressed. However, there is something that, in my view, is not going right. When the Ministry allocates the same number of teachers to all the constituencies--- The Ministry has allocated 66 teachers for primary schools in every constituency and 20 teachers for secondary schools. I cannot understand the logic and I hope the Minister is going to explain to us here. A constituency may have five secondary schools and fewer vacancies and then you give it 20 teachers, while another constituency will have many vacancies and many schools. In fact, some of the schools have only one teacher. Then you give them the same number of teachers. I have been unable to understand the logic and I hope they will explain to us why all the constituencies are being given an equal number of teachers and yet, the vacancies are not the same. I would have expected that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) would have a record of which school has what, and allocate those teachers based on need and not necessarily as per the constituency. Therefore, I feel that something is wrong! The other thing has to do with teachers training vacancies. As we speak, we have some districts or constituencies which have many people who qualify to attend teachers training colleges, but they cannot go. Those that already have more teachers than others take their students for training. So, in fact, we have areas with students who qualify to go to teachers training colleges but the people there do not get the opportunity to take their boys and girls to these colleges. Therefore, what happens is that they keep on getting teachers from other constituencies or districts which have over-trained. I think this is unfair and unless we correct these things, we cannot pretend to be doing things in an equitable manner and yet, we want this nation to be as cohesive as we want it to be. On the issue of ICT, some areas in this Republic are treated as if they are not part of Kenya. We have some areas where students or even teachers have never seen a computer. They do not know how a computer looks like and yet, they are in secondary schools. We have other secondary schools with hundreds of computers. We want this issue of ICT to be looked at carefully so that, all the schools are treated equally. On the issue of early childhood education, during the Ninth Parliament, we passed a policy on education. The basis of that policy paper was to ensure that the Government takes over education as early as pre-primary to enhance the quality of education and to ensure that parents are relieved of the burden of recruiting teachers when they have no resources. I heard the Minister say that he was sorry that, that has not taken off. I want to ask him that as he moves to the next phase, he should implement that without any further delay. Quality assurance is another issue. As we speak now, there are education officials who are supposed to go round inspecting schools, but they have no transport. In my own case, I know of a district education officer who uses matatus and boda bodas to go and inspect schools. Is that really what we want our education officers to go through? I think it is high time that the Ministry of Education provides the necessary tools - including transport - to our officers so that they can do a better job than they are doing now. Otherwise, they are doing a good job and they should be commended. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}