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{
    "id": 951297,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/951297/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 254,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Igembe Central, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kubai Iringo",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1574,
        "legal_name": "Cyprian Kubai Iringo",
        "slug": "cyprian-kubai-iringo"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to add my voice to this Bill. Let me thank the Chair and the Departmental Committee on Education and Research for presenting the Bill, and for the fact that the Chair has said that the Committee will propose amendments, which I feel we need to enact. Despite the fact that the Ministry did its bit, I feel there are some grey areas in the Bill which need to be polished further, so that we can fine-tune it and give early childhood education its correct place in the country. Early childhood education is the foundation and that is why the centres are even called nurseries. You find that even tree nurseries are tendered more neatly than where the seedlings are put at maturity. If you go to our schools today, you will find that nursery schools or the early childhood classes are neglected to the level that Standards One to Eight is where the focus and efforts are put, including infrastructure. Classes for nursery schools are dilapidated or are not there and some of the children learn under trees in some remote areas. The parents pick a lady in the village who has not been trained to teach their children. That is a very bad and poor foundation for our children. Therefore, if our children have to have a good beginning and a good future, we need to start by giving them the correct infrastructure, so that they can learn properly. They need to have qualified teachers to teach them. Teachers in early children classes are more important than teachers in secondary schools because they nurse the children from the word go immediately they start their learning. Today, if you go to a school, you will find the head teacher of a primary school who is answerable to the TSC while the ECD teachers work on their own independently. They are never assessed. Nobody seeks to know their problems. Even if they have complaints, nobody will listen to them. They do not have any structure. This Bill should have a structure whereby the ECD teachers have their own union or are assimilated into the existing unions, so that they can have 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."
}