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"id": 953208,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/953208/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Kirinyaga, JP",
"speaker_title": "Hon Munene Wambugu",
"speaker": {
"id": 13382,
"legal_name": "John Munene Wambugu",
"slug": "john-munene-wambugu"
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"content": "Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, this Motion is based on Article 55 of the Constitution, which actually requires, as a duty of the Government, to ensure that its youth access quality and good education. I must start by commending the Jubilee Government led by His Excellency the President of the Republic of Kenya for ensuring that we have 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary schools. It has its own small problems but by over 90 per cent enrolment, the Government has succeeded to ensure that all primary school students go to secondary school. Despite those challenges, I believe time has come for us to get to the next level of ensuring that all pupils who sat their Form IV examinations transit to tertiary education. Those are the ones who will not be able to make it to the university. The data which is available is very worrying. If you go by 2016, about 577,000 did their Form IV examinations. Out of that, only about 88,000 went to university. It is the same thing in 2017 and 2018. Actually, about less than 15 per cent of students who were in Form IV transitioned to tertiary education. We know that by the time someone reaches Form IV currently, they are still under 18 years of age. Some are as young as 17 years. If that kid gets a D, E or C and comes from a humble family, he may never be able to go to the next level of education. What am I trying to say? I am saying that the Government invests so much money from nursery school to Form IV. It invests millions of shillings on a student, but we fail to invest the little remaining to make that teenager productive. When a child leaves school at 17 or 18 years with no skills at all, what can that student do? If he or she is given a small push irrespective of the background; that once you do Form IV, automatically, whichever grade you get, you are placed into a tertiary institution depending on what you scored; we will have enhanced their skills. Even if it is in driving, knitting or mechanics, you need to acquire that skill. You will find that the Government will invest less and make a product of that child who will now become productive in the society. In fact, most countries which have developed like Germany, South Korea and others have invested a lot in vocational training. We appreciate and know what the Jubilee Government is doing on the TVET institutions where, as a policy, every constituency should have a TVET institution. However, are we investing enough in ensuring that once a child does his Form IV exams, he or she will go to the next level of education and acquire skills? We need to educate the population on the benefit of acquiring skills, irrespective of what type of skills. In this country, the biggest resource we have is human resource. We may have found oil in Turkana – where I come from we have coffee, tea and horticulture - but human resource is the biggest resource we have in this country. Once our children acquire skills, the issue of employment notwithstanding, they can even get employment outside the country. Take a case whereby a child has just finished Form Four, goes home and the parents cannot afford to take him or her to the next level, what are we saying to those children? What can we do? What can that person do? If the Government takes it as a policy naturally and by design to ensure that the minute you do your Form Four you must go to the next level, irrespective of what you got, this country will take off massively. Manufacturing is part of the Big Four Agenda that we are talking about. In all types of manufacturing, whether automobiles or in the industries, you require skills. In fact, university education is overrated. We need to have a mind-shift from emphasising that for one to succeed in life, one must acquire university education. That is where we go wrong as a country. There is a gap between secondary and university. There is a very big gap because we need technical people 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."
}