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{
    "id": 945877,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/945877/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 202,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Funyula, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Dr. Wilberforce Oundo",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13331,
        "legal_name": "Wilberforce Ojiambo Oundo",
        "slug": "wilberforce-ojiambo-oundo-2"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for giving me an opportunity to contribute to this timely Motion. Each year the country registers a large number of students to sit for Form Four exams. As many of us are aware, probably, less than 15 per cent in a normal society succeed to join university to do some serious courses. Of course, there are some who go to do courses that might not be serious as such, but nevertheless they still go to the university. Many of them go to universities that probably would not qualify to be universities in a serious system. However, since we have created them, we must sustain them in one way or another. It leaves out a very large chunk of students. These are young men and women who are unable to progress in life. There is a bad mentality. If you do not go to university, you are branded a failure. Our society is structured such that every parent would wish to sit in a social gathering, be it in chama or church group, and boast how their children are in the university. This mindset has been inculcated in young people to an extent that students who do not qualify to join university crash psychologically because they are seen to have failed the exams. Many of us who work in our constituencies interact with our people. Many a times, parents would tell you that they are sorry that their children failed their final exams. When you ask them how their children performed, they would tell you that they did not qualify to proceed to university. The starting point is to talk to parents; including me, to have a positive mindset. Ideally, no student fails exams. It is only that one student gets more marks than another. It does not mean that the one who scored low marks failed. In any case, all of you can never get equal marks. That then beats the essence of a competition. There is need to find a mechanism of equipping students who do not make it to university. There should be a process of ensuring that they acquire skills that would make them useful in life. Even if they want to be in whatever form they want, post-secondary skills are important for development and advancement of society. It is, therefore, important that the Government puts in place mechanisms for ensuring that we have 100 per cent transition to various cadres of post-secondary school training. There are other students who sit for Standard Eight exams but for some strange reasons, they do not wish to proceed to secondary. They do not think they have the motivation to go through the rigorous secondary school education programme. It is, therefore, important that, as Parliament, we support the Government in putting in place mechanisms that will take young boys and girls to the next level of training. We are specifically aware that vocational training centres are a devolved function managed by the county governments. However, the investment by county governments in vocational training centres for the last eight years has been minimal. These institutions, which were taken away from the national Government, were called village polytechnics. For example, in Busia County, where I come from, there has not been any improvement in any of the eight institutions that were village polytechnics, since they were handed over to the county government. They remained dilapidated and inadequately staffed. They also do not have training equipment. There is the stigma that village polytechnics are meant for Standard Eight failures or people who did not go to school. That mentality has made the county governments not The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}