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{
"id": 1525222,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525222/?format=api",
"text_counter": 154,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. Beatrice Elachi (",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Dagoretti North, ODM): Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Speaker. I rise to support the Bill and thank Hon. Wamaua for bringing it at this critical time when we have the new Competency-Based-Curriculum (CBC) system. We need to streamline so many things that are bad in the Ministry of Education. I hope we shall see a change in the Ministry of Education. You cannot tell me people in the Ministry can be experts for 30-40 years. They should leave space to bring in new blood. That is what we want to see in the Ministry of Education. Having said that, I know there is something the Ministry of Education calls “sub-county education offices\" which have no powers. The people there wonder what they should do. It is time we completely change to what Hon. Wamaua has proposed. We now need to streamline the roles so that sub-county offices have more power because it is the office at the base where all schools are. You can find yourself running all over in a sub-county. Currently, each constituency is a sub-county, so we need the education boards. If there is anything that is taking us on a roller coaster that we do not understand, it is the education sector. We need to consult every time because of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC). When I look at the whole structure, the board was supposed to advise the Cabinet Secretary. To date, I wonder where quality assurance is. What happened? Where is this team? We need it for the CBC, but the Ministry of Education at Jogoo House has decided to muzzle this completely. Therefore, we do not have anyone. Even as we cry about how private schools have built all their classrooms, we want to return to the same problem we had with the 8-4-4 System, where public schools are just public schools, yet when results come out, we see private schools taking over while public schools are not doing well. Why? This is because we have handed over the mistakes we made in the education and health sector 30 years ago. Those are the consequences we are facing. If you want to promote the standards of basic education, you need the Sub-County Education Boards because they can walk to any school daily and tell you where things are not working. A teacher can rush to ask how they can be supported. Sometimes there are very interesting boards. The other day, I looked at the terms of the board and realised we needed new teams to come to these schools. We need people who can embrace and properly operate the schools. You walk into a school and wonder about basic things. While sitting with the board, you ask yourself: Surely, does the school need to have this? You are the board. You are the team that needs to introduce better ideas and values to the school. You move it, the management takes it over, and thereafter, the teachers take it over. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
},
{
"id": 1525223,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525223/?format=api",
"text_counter": 155,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. Beatrice Elachi (",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "The other day, I went to a school whose name I will not mention, and I was so angry. First of all, it is not just the board. You receive a new teacher, and one year down the line, the school deteriorates, and money is lost. When you look at the history of the teachers, they are being taken care of by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), yet in every school they have taught, they have created a mess. I said, no, it cannot be this way. Instead of the board bringing a solution, they protested in the school the next day. I told the sub-county heads I wanted seriousness because they know I do not joke with education in Dagoretti North. This is why I am here. For instance, you will find a school where you are about to support them with Ksh30 million NG-CDF funds to build a hall. The board decides and tells you that the parents will contribute Ksh34 million. I asked them: Do you have pending bills in your school yet want to spend Ksh64 million to build a hall? Where does that work? Why do you have pending bills? Why can you not pay pending bills?\" We need the Sub-County Education Boards, where you are an ex-officio member, to come in and start streamlining things in schools. This is because some things we do to our parents do not make sense. When you look at how parents pay school fees, most of them are on the line of Ksh15,000. You have a huge debt, but your parents can pay Ksh15,000. I asked Jogoo House why they cannot resolve that parents pay Ksh15,000 because that is what they can afford rather than waiting for the child to get to Form 4 and then withholding their results slips. That is why we need this board. It will enable us to come up with resolutions and send them to the counties, which will then advise the Cabinet Secretary. In 80 per cent of extra county schools, parents can pay school fees of less than Ksh17,000. It is a curve that shows their ability. We need to think. When you make it Ksh23,000, the school finds itself in debt, and the money will never be paid. We then fight and have nowhere to sit and agree. Hon. Temporary Speaker, the Education Act wanted us to do things in a certain way, and it must now be done properly, just as Hon. Murugaru said. Honestly, it is time this House agreed on equitable distribution of teachers. I am not saying you cannot do affirmative action in other schools, but can we start at a level of equity? We have 290 constituencies, with some having 1,000 schools. That is where you look at affirmative action but at a curve that is equal. First, you ensure equity in the schools and implement affirmative action in areas with many schools. You find a school with 38 teachers employed by the Board of Management (BOM). It means that the school is run by BOM. There are many county schools where parents are the ones who are taking care of the teachers. You have about five or six TSC teachers; the rest are under the BOM. Interestingly, TSC has never come up with a new system for rewarding a BOM teacher teaching biology and chemistry, whose subject raises the mean grade of that school. That is a TSC teacher who is still under BOM. Hon. Temporary Speaker, as I support Hon. Wamaua, we must be serious with the education sector if we want to see a serious CBC. Thank you."
},
{
"id": 1525224,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525224/?format=api",
"text_counter": 156,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "(Hon. (Dr) Rachael Nyamai): Thank you. Next is the Member for Alego Usonga, Hon. Samwel Atandi."
},
{
"id": 1525225,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525225/?format=api",
"text_counter": 157,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Alego Usonga, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Samwel Atandi",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this Bill. From the outset, I support the Bill on the amendment to the Basic Education Act to create Sub-County Education Boards. This is a very progressive Bill, and I congratulate Hon. Wamaua for coming up with it. The current County Education Boards have many functions. These functions are very important for the management of education in the country. One of the functions of the County Education Boards is to help in the management of schools and to influence the quality of education in our counties. This role alone has not been effective because the County Education Boards, as constituted, have been unable to execute this role effectively. This is because their mandate includes working across the counties. Some The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
},
{
"id": 1525226,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525226/?format=api",
"text_counter": 158,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Alego Usonga, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Samwel Atandi",
"speaker": null,
"content": "of those counties are big and wide with many schools. Therefore, creating sub-county education boards will help by having a small team that focuses only on the sub-counties to ensure high education standards and quality. For instance, if you visit a county with five sub-counties when Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) or Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) results are released, you find that one sub-county has done very well. In contrast, the other sub-counties have done so poorly. This means that this particular board is not effective in handling this specific function across all the sub-counties. Therefore, having a sub-county education board that focuses on one sub-county will ensure quality performance in our schools. The other role of the County Education Boards is to approve the creation of new schools. I have had difficulty starting new schools because of the ineffectiveness of the County Education Boards. The number of times they sit and the availability of membership, when they call meetings, would take a year to start a new school. Some of these new schools are a result of public participation. The communities are asking for schools, but the approvers take years to do it. When we have the Sub-County Education Board, it will be quicker to address some of the requests that come out of public participation from the community. There is another function that I believe the creation of Sub-County Education Boards is going perform. This is my problem; we have the Free Day Secondary School System. Day secondary school is free, but parents are asked to pay for the school feeding programme. The amount of fees that secondary school day scholars pay is for the payment of the school feeding programme. The County Education Board determines how much money parents should pay for the school feeding programme. Sometimes a Member may arrange for parents to pay less, but then you are told that the County Education Board already determined and fixed the amount of money that should be paid. This is sometimes unfair. If we have a Sub-County Education Board that is purely within a constituency, we can easily agree with them on the amount parents are to pay for the school feeding programme, for instance, Ksh5,000. When a County Education Board is supposed to look at this matter and make decisions, it becomes very cumbersome for colleagues to determine something like this. I submit that this is a very progressive piece of law. I urge Members to look at it and approve it so that it helps us, first of all, to ensure that we improve standards of education within our sub-counties and also to ensure that there is efficiency on matters that touch on the approval of new schools, and any other matter that is consistent with the Education Act. There is something that I also propose that we can consider as an amendment. I do not believe that churches have a role to play in our schools. We have churches as sponsors of schools, and therefore, they have representatives in the schools. I do not think they have a role to play in this arrangement. I will be introducing a Bill to amend the Basic Education Act to delete the role of the church or religion in the affairs of schools. According to me, churches have worked towards creating weak management in schools. In a case where a school is sponsored by the Catholic or Anglican Church, even when a principal or a headmaster is not performing, the church must have a say in whether the principal sits there or not. I know of a case where the community wants a particular principal to leave, but the church says no. The church does not look at performance but at prayers and things like that. They do not even know how the school is performing. When they come to school, they do not ask for the school's results and how the school performs. They do not ask how the principal works. They also do not ask if the school has positive results. They are not interested in that. The church is only interested in prayers. This House needs to consider deleting the responsibility of churches in the affairs of our schools. Hon. Temporary Speaker, I submit. Thank you."
},
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"id": 1525227,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525227/?format=api",
"text_counter": 159,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Nyando, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Jared Okello",
"speaker": null,
"content": " On a point of order, Hon. Temporary Speaker."
},
{
"id": 1525228,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525228/?format=api",
"text_counter": 160,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "(Hon. (Dr) Rachael Nyamai): What is out of order, Hon. Martin Owino? The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
},
{
"id": 1525229,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525229/?format=api",
"text_counter": 161,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Nyando, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Jared Okello",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Hon. Temporary Speaker, whereas I do not intend to pour cold water on sentiments made by my brother, Hon. Atandi, we acknowledge the responsibility that is played by churches in our schools and within our communities. The churches offer spiritual nourishment to our people. Therefore, their participatory role in our schools cannot be properly gainsaid."
},
{
"id": 1525230,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525230/?format=api",
"text_counter": 162,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "(Hon. (Dr) Rachael Nyamai): Order Hon. Jared Okello. What exactly is out of order?"
},
{
"id": 1525231,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525231/?format=api",
"text_counter": 163,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Nyando, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Jared Okello",
"speaker": null,
"content": " What is out of order, Hon. Temporary Speaker, is Hon. Atandi's assertion that we need to divorce …."
}
]
}