End Of Free Secondary Education (FSE)
Every child in the republic of Kenya deserves to access quality education. Provision of quality education is dependent on availability of learning resources ranging from personnel to teaching and learning aids; both manufactured and improvised.
The advent of CBC showed light at the end of the tunnel on matters about matching education curriculum to the job market needed competencies. Gok in its loyalty to Kenyan child has allocated millions to CBC foundational establishment.
Beginning with building of CBC Classrooms across the country to retooling of teachers to acquaint them with requisite CBC skills not to mention the massive teacher recruitment Kenya government has done albeit labour malpractices surrounding the recruitment. The country has already invested a lot in the curriculum.
We have every responsibility to ensure that we are getting the value for money the tax payer is channeling to education including but not limited to what Jss entity is allocated.
The funds government has channeled to Jss is very little going by the needs in Junior Secondary Schools. Various quarters have called the government to increase Capitation to Jss. I support the callers while I challenge ourselves to ensure the funds are prudently spend. If a school has received Ksh. 200,000 for maintenance and improvement is there work at the school that reflect so well the value of the same amount?
Do we have chairs, offices even if they are makeshifts that everyone would accept that it has really exhausted the 200K received. Jss secondary teachers are facing challenges of gigantic proportions. They report absolute unavailability of teaching and learning resources which must prompt agencies concerned to thoroughly audit learning resources bought in each school Vis a Vis the amount dispatched to those schools since inception.
Where is the problem? Is it Gok or the managers of the resources? This question must be answered so as to guarantee public that a generation of children are not getting lost. Murdered through a bogus education marred with massive inadequacy of learning resources.
Given the austerity measures we are encouraging ourselves to take as a country we had rather realise early before we get lost to a greater extent that sub county secondary schools across the country are enough to accommodate at least 70% of Jss learners. If we could agree as a country to all shelve our ego and selfish interests and transfer all Jss learners to Sub-County Secondary schools where possible we could save a lot.
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We could protect children from exposure to half baked education and save a lot of money for other things as a country. Sub county secondary schools have adequate laboratories needed for lab practicals, they have CBC classrooms that were build in 2021 and 2022, they have teachers who can handle Jss content comfortably. Where Secondary schools are far we consider establishing stand alone junior Secondary schools.
The Jss teachers already recruited combined with those already existing in secondary schools makes a great pool of teachers which if they all combined to handle Jss learners we could achieve a lot as a country.
The earlier we realize that we are killing a generation with massive incredulity the better.
Why would we incur costs of constructing new laboratories when we have laboratories in secondary schools?
Why would we strain learners walking amid lessons to neighbouring secondary schools to acces labs when they can go there in the morning and learn there the whole day with unlimited exposure to lab equipment and other awesome resources?
Why would we witness waste of billions of money that were used to construct CBC classrooms in a country that we are struggling to pay debts.
It is still early we can make an about turn.
If moving Jss learners and teachers to secondary schools is impossible let us make Jss independent institutions so as to reduce the under implementation of their curriculum. The practical concepts which were anticipated have been made theoretical. The primary school environment cannot accommodate the needs of Jss curriculum.
It is a generation that we must be honest to ourselves that we are killing and we must make firm decisions to reverse the damage before it irrevocably damage learners and teachers.
We must act promptly
Vice Chair
Kuppet Bomet Branch
End Of Free Secondary Education (FSE)
