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"id": 951030,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) James Nyikal",
"speaker": {
"id": 434,
"legal_name": "James Nyikal",
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"content": "function of the county government, it is important to know that whereas we have 47 counties, we have one nation. Therefore, on the issue of standards, you want to be sure that if you are moving from the Rift Valley to the Coast with your child who is in early education, they are going to fit perfectly. What the counties do is to implement the policies and standards that exist. The county assemblies can oversee and can make minor changes, but the overall changes must be the same. Therefore, for the Senate to bring this, it is bringing a very important issue at a very critical stage. Part II recognises what I have been saying on the right to early childhood education. I would have added there “and development”. If you look at the details, it brings out the obligation of a county. They are not taking anything from the county, but there is an obligation to make sure that they have early childhood education in the right manner according to the standards that we want. What of the role of parents, the role of teachers and the role of guardians at this stage? A lot of times our children go to school as early as 6.00 a.m. They come back late. The development of a child is an important thing. I sometimes wonder. Children in developed countries go to school at 9.00 a.m. and return home at 3.00 p.m. and they still seem to be doing better than our children. In our country, you find little guys with big bags at 6.00 a.m. I wonder what they learn with all those big bags. It is, therefore, extremely important for us to look into these aspects, and into the duties of the people involved. Part III is about the establishment of centres. It provides for the criteria for establishing them, the way they should be registered, and the process that are involved. We cannot overemphasise that. We have just seen what has happened. If we had criteria of saying “this school is fit to do this”, we would not have those things happening because somebody would do it. I know it is there for primary schools and secondary schools although we do not really adhere to them. This is even more important. Clause 22 is on private schools. People may not realise, but problems are more likely to occur in private schools than in public schools. The private schools that we like because we think they are doing well are actually the high cost schools. Low cost private schools are like the one whose roof collapsed and killed people in Dagoretti. We need to have standards. When you have children of this level, you must adhere to the standards. We have decided to have our children in early childhood development education centres, which we can establish as private or public institutions. This Bill provides for the structures within which they will be operationalised, the he boards that will run them, how the boards will function and how the heads will function. In my view, this Bill does a lot. It goes into the administration and the recruitment of teachers. In fact, you probably need graduate teachers in early childhood education schools than you probably need them in primary schools. You are here dealing with not only, as I said, education, but the development of children. These are people who should be trained a bit in child health, so that they can pick issues of health that occur at that time. This is the time when you can notice that a child is short-sighted. We should start thinking of paying them well. The thinking that ECDE teachers should be paid less because they look after small children is an anomaly. This is the person who needs better pay. We are talking about prohibition of exams and prohibition of holding them accountable or expelling them from school, among other issues. Again, they will need to be assessed. What are you assessing in somebody who is in pre-school? You need to assess them. You are not just going to assess education performance and whether they can read and write, but you even want to check their development and what they are able to do. You may not realise, but a five-year old child may still not be able to stand on one leg. These are small things that you want to pick and 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."
}