By Okech Kendo

The hyper Minister for Education may have an eye for detail, but he often focuses on the wrong priorities. This makes his running of the ministry increasingly intrusive.

Two instances – sizes of skirts for girls, and the    unilateral and general ban on tuition – stand out. These operational details should be left to teachers and board of governors, who make up school management committees.

Minister Mutula Kilonzo is mistaking trees for the forest.  He is downgrading his Jogoo House policy office to actual running of schools.

 If a minister runs schools from up down that low, he would be competing with zonal inspectors, quality assurance officers, area education officers, district education officers, and provincial directors of education.

Junior officers have watched as the minister drives policy and meddles in their execution.   These officers cannot tell the minister he is straying because they are scared he could bomb them out of positions.

The minister cannot do everything for schools.  He should not even try to be the principal of Someni Secondary School. He should not because he does not understand the special needs of this institution. These special needs may also apply to other schools that may desire special interventions, like tuition, to complete.

After the intrusive rage over the size of skirts schoolgirls should wear so that they “don’t look like nuns”, the minister is now on unqualified ban on tuition.

Again, the minister has lit another fire on matters that should be left to schools and Parents and Teachers Associations to decide, based on the unique needs of their institutions. Non-examination classes, and other pupils farther down from Class Eight and Form Four, may not need tuition in the Mutula sense. But schools – and some do not have teachers, even for examinable subjects – should have the discretion to decide what is in the best interests of their candidates.

There are many schools without English, Maths and Chemistry teachers. Some have one or two teachers in these subjects who cannot spread their energies in three or more streams across four classes. It is not the mistake of these schools that they do not have enough teachers in the recommended ratio per pupil. Yet some schools, even with fewer streams, have more teachers than they need.

Ongeri’s notes

A blanket notion that schools and teachers should know when to begin, and compete KCPE and KCSE syllabi is easier said than done. And it takes much more than ministerial ranting about tuition to get it done.

Now, the minister is threatening to bomb-out head teachers and principals who dare make professional and need-based decisions on holiday tuition for their candidates.  

After claiming to have banned tuition, without understanding special needs of some schools, the minister is asking the Teachers Service Commission to prosecute principals who defying the blanket order.

So what shall be the charge Mr Minister for principals who have been begging your office and the Teachers Service Commission for a geography teacher for years?

Instead of threatening teachers who make the right decisions for candidates, you should be asking the TSC why it does not practice equity in the deployment and employment of teachers across the country.

But it may also be possible Prof Samson Ongeri did not leave hand-over notes to the current Minister for Education.  Mutula may not have got take-over notes when he arrived at the ministry about five months ago.

A simple hoto should have shown the minister that, although the syllabus for Kenya Certificate of Primary Education and the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education are uniform across the country, schools have special challenges.

These challenges should be blamed on the Treasury, Ministry of Education, and TSC. But now the minister is blaming victims of the ministry’s skewed deployment and the Government’s failure to employ more teachers. 

Although the teaching deficit is about 80,000, TSC only advertised for 11,000 positions. The belated decision means the ministry knows there are schools that do not have enough teachers to cover the KCPE and KCSE syllabi within the regular school calendar.  Once teachers recognise their deficiencies, they should not be victimised for making decisions on tuition based on their needs.

When the minister bans what parents may be supporting, then it shows he is out of touch with the challenges in some schools he wants to manage from Jogoo House in Nairobi.

Some of these challenges are not new.  Some of us did not become space scientists because we never had mathematics, physics, geography, and chemistry teachers, when we needed them most. 

Eye for detail

There was no one to teach these subjects in Form One, Two, and even Form Three.  Priority for the few teachers, were examination classes.

You would not expect a school dropout from Form Six or Four to lay laboratory-based foundation for pupils in subjects where they were themselves clueless.

Mutula is a lawyer, with a sharp eye for detail and deals, which is how he made a name and money.   But he is not a teacher, and he cannot claim to know more about the unique needs of various schools than the teachers and principals who know their pupils.

The minister should clean the education system before harassing victims of unequal deployment of teachers. Sabre rattling from Nairobi won’t redress iniquities and inequalities ieducation.

The writer is The Standard’s Managing Editor Quality and Production kendo@standardmedia.co.ke