President William Ruto Pledges On Education

• Promises Made - Kenya President
• 2 Years, 9 Months ago
• 387

President William Ruto Pledges On Education

Education

Education is the ultimate means of ensuring an equitable society. Equitable education ensures that every child has a chance to fulfil their potential and rise to the highest level of accomplishment, irrespective of their social background. Conversely, an inequitable education system, which favours those from socially and economically advantaged backgrounds, is the surest way of maintaining or developing a class society.

Universal primary education was achieved through Free Primary Education (FPE) in 2003, but education outcomes remain highly inequitable. Considerable progress has been made towards universal secondary education, but the current tiered system places the better-resourced national schools out of the poor’s reach. The cost of joining a boarding secondary school is now Sh80,000 which is expensive for ordinary working Kenyans.

While bursaries mitigate some of this bias, they are far from adequate. Distress calls for and heroic acts of determination by bright children, who are unable to take up their places in such high schools, has become the norm. Earlier this year, a girl in Tharaka Nithi County made news by walking 50km to the school she had been admitted to. In neighboring Embu, a boy sought to pay his school fees with a cockerel!

Kenya Kwanza Commitment

The Kenya Kwanza government commits to address the inequities in our education system so as to level the playing field for all children irrespective of their background. We further commit to equitable universal basic education defined as 12 years of schooling.

Kenya Kwanza Government Will:

• Pay for in-service teacher training initiated by Government;
• Bridge the current teacher shortage gap of 116,000 within two financial years;
• Establish a Special Service Tariff for all learning institutions for basic utilities such as water, electricity and Internet connection;
• Review the current exam-based system of academic progression, which has excluded millions of learners based on basic education level exit exams, by implementing alternative entry criteria;
• Improve capacity of day secondary schools to guarantee access to quality education and reduce the costs. Currently, 72 per cent of learners in secondary schools are in day schools, while only 28 per cent are in boarding schools;
• Establish a National Skill and Funding Council that amalgamates HELB, TVET and University Funding Board and increase funding to bridge the current 45 per cent gap;
• Build a fully equipped Technical Training and Vocational Education Training Institution (TVET) in the remaining 52 constituencies within the first two years;
• Set up a National Open University to increase access and reduce the cost of university education while making 100 per cent transition to higher education a reality;
• Establish a one-year paid National Internship Programme for all students graduating from teachers, technical and medical colleges and universities, by collaborating with industry players;
• Increase funding for research and development from the current 0.8 per cent to 2 per cent of GDP in accordance with the Science and Technology Innovation (ST&I) Act 2013 as per the bottom-up economic agenda. Additionally, incentivise the private sector to contribute towards research;
• Double the amount of money allocated to the school feeding programme to immediately raise the number of beneficiaries from two million to four million; and to provide conditional grants to county governments to extend the programme and raise the numbers to 8 million in primary and Early Child Development (ECD) schools;
• Domesticate teacher recruitment and deployment at entry level according to the UNESCO teacher deployment practice which treats education as a cultural process conducted within a people’s cultural context at the local level. All schools including in marginal areas must affirmatively have enough teachers. To deal with the challenge faced by teachers resulting from delocalisation, we will replace this policy with a nationalisation programme which will incentivise teachers who choose to serve in other parts of the country

"Education is the ultimate means of ensuring an equitable society. Equitable education ensures that every child has a chance to fulfil their potential and rise to the highest level of accomplishment."

SOURCE: Citizen Digital

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