By Nicholas Anyuor
Since the establishment of the Constituency Development Fund in 2003, more and more people have been ripping its benefits in health, business, infrastructure and education sectors. In particular, CDF has contributed a lot in transforming the education sector through sponsoring needy learners, building schools and equipping others.
Thanks to the development kitty, almost every village has a secondary school. In some areas, residents have demanded that every primary school to have a secondary wing for accessibility and faster transition rate.
For instance, in Muhoroni constituency, where the Education Assistant Minister Ayiecho Olweny is MP, CDF has built several of them, commonly referred to as ‘ CDF schools’. The minister says before the coming of CDF, the constituency had only nine secondary schools, but the number has since increased to 30.
“Proper use (of CDF) in education has seen many schools built and now many children can afford education because these are cheap day schools,” he says.
Can do better
Prof Olweny argues that such schools do not compromise the quality of education since they have produced good grades at the national exams. He cites Manera Secondary in his area, which ranked 14th best district school in last year’s KCSE.
“This is one of the CDF schools we have built and is performing even better than some established ones. So we can’t say they do not perform well,” he adds.
However, educationists and parents differ with Ayiecho, saying the flooding of CDF schools, though a blessing to the improvement of literacy levels, are killing the quality of education.
Andrew Odira, 30, a parent in Kimai village in Nyatike District, argues that something should be done to control construction of these institutions, saying they will become irrelevant with time.
He says most of these schools do not have enough facilities, admit ‘failed’ pupils from primary schools and are hardly well staffed.
No special training
