Ruto must pay more attention to education
Ruto must pay more attention to education
Ruto must pay more attention to education
The state of disarray in the education sector cannot be avoided. The system is broken in both major and little ways.
The government overlooked the fact that building schools was required when junior secondary was added to the system.
Teachers received inadequate preparation for the new curriculum. Capitation grant payments are not being made on time due to budgetary restrictions.
Furthermore, it appears that the administration is unable to put in place a suitable national examination system. All of this is regrettable.
Kenyans have always been particularly obsessed with education, and usually for good reasons.
We have never had a perfect educational system, it is true, but during the past 60 years, the desire for one has brought out the best in us.
The drive for educational access was a major driving force behind the best aspects of the Harambee System, specifically the section on community self-help.
Education was also seen as a tool of social mobility, enabling a general commitment to the social contract behind Project Kenya.
When Kenyans started the process of rejecting colonial domination, one of the first investments was in education.
Forget the need to train workers. To understand our education system is to appreciate its socio-cultural importance throughout the country. Kenyan households and communities invest heavily in education.
Therefore, the success or failure of the public education system will have a bearing on how the society sees itself.
The private sector can only go so far in filling the gaps. At the end of the day, the vast majority of families need the public system to work.
Killing the public education system – as we seem to be hellbent on doing – will be tantamount to killing our very communities.
It is not too late to bring sanity to the system. There is absolutely no reason why we could not have reformed the curriculum within the 8-4-4 system.
There is no reason at all why everyone who graduates from high school but is unable to enroll in college cannot have access to a strong two-year vocation system. There is just no justification for not granting free basic education to all students up to the age of 18.
