President Uhuru Kenyatta seeks support for laptop project

A section of the head teachers present at the conference follow proceedings.

By Augustine Oduor and Linah Benyawa

MOMBASA; KENYA: President Uhuru Kenyatta has made a passionate appeal to primary school head teachers to support his government’s effort to roll out laptops for Standard One pupils starting next year.

He urged the primary school managers to update their capacity to implement the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) project for schools ahead of the implementation.

The head of state, however, directed Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi to issue a comprehensive audit report on the state of quality assurance at the ministry and in schools.

The president said his government was committed to improving learning standards in the country and noted that education funding will progressively be raised to 32 per cent of the GDP by 2018.

Addressing the over 10,000 school heads in Mombasa, President Kenyatta said someone “must have slept on the job” as almost half the teachers were not ICT-compliant and demanded to know what quality assurance staff at the Ministry of Education were doing.

Giant leap

He said the Jubilee government was making a giant leap from the bad management practices of the past to an accountable system.

On the laptop programme, the president said the head teachers, as managers of schools, were a critical component of the ICT project and asked for their support.

“We are ushering in a new beginning and mine is to ask you to please embrace it,” he said.

The president said the successful implementation of the laptop project would empower the Kenyan child to be competitive in the job market.

He was speaking yesterday during the Kenya Primary School Heads Association (Kepsha) annual meeting in Mombasa.

The president also put on notice communities that use cultural practices to deny children education.

He cited Female Genital Mutilation as one of the practices that have locked the girl-child out of school.

“These cultural practices should not undermine children’s enrolment in schools. Indeed these are serious criminal infringements and child abuses, and they must stop,” he said.

He added that the government would ensure that school enrolment in arid and semi-arid areas is increased. He said teachers must be professionally prepared to drive the education agenda forward.