The former Education Minister Kalonzo Musyoka made a drastic decision to abolish canning from schools, then later Hon. Mutula Kilonzo intervened to decide on the length of school skirts when girls in Rwathia Girls went on a riot protesting long skirts.
Next, students in a school in Ukambani went on a rampage because they wanted booming music in their school bus, another boy's school torched a school bus just because they wanted to travel together with girls in the same bus against school orders.
We should ask the question whether Cabinet secretaries are put in office to decide matters of student discipline, whether students should be mixed (boys and girls together) in a bus during transit, whether students can be ferried at night and many other minor issues which in my opinion do not necessitate a decision from the ministry but instead from school management boards.
Many schools are usually run by roadside decisions from the Head teacher, and usually don’t have any formal rules, regulations or quality standards.
My solution.
I would request the government to ensure every secondary school in the country has a website. The Ministry of education should ensure that it provides a template for school's website, and in such a template there should be sections such as diet (for each meal), school uniform colours (should be specific up to length, shade and when it should be worn), learning hours, transport available, social events, school holidays and celebration, discipline (can you be caned if sick or who will carry out the caning?, what length of cane?), whether a discipline record must be kept - to avert the case where an epileptic child died in central Kenya after being caned.
The reason for this would be so that when a student who is sitting for his class 8 examination in Moyale, and is seeking to go to ABC high school (for example) they can go to ABC school website and know in advance that if they go to that school, they will be eating githeri Monday to Friday and bathing with cold water, and maybe eating a piece of meat every Sunday. The website should be hosted by the Ministry of education and can be used by students or aggrieved parent against the school which may for example have caned their son or daughter whereas they wrote on the website that there was no caning in ABC school.
Issues of disciplining a student should be left in the hands of the parent, the gov't should know that we all come from families, and they shouldn't abdicate the importance of a home in the shaping of a future citizen. This in mind, the ministry of education should ensure that each school has a student board, this student board will be elected by the students, and their job would be to sit down together with the PTA and BOG when coming up with school rules, regulations etc. the ministry of education can decide on how many students should be allowed for a student board, and their voting power. As the main decision makers should always be the BOG and Parents.
The school having been described and organised in this manner, will leave the CS’s with the job of managing the quality of education. Students will also be introduced to democracy as they will learn to vent their frustrations through student boards and directly to the school management.
Many schools usually experience riots as they are fully owned and run by their private owners, they have no functioning school boards (have no reporting authority) or PTA. But introduction of student boards would strengthen our learning institutions
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