Let State, teachers dialogue to end the national strike

Few things demonstrate the dysfunction in this country’s education system as well as the troubled relationship between the two teachers’ unions and the Government. The adversarial nature of interactions between the unions and the State -- through their employer, the Teachers Service Commission, the Treasury, the Education Ministry or the Labour Ministry -- has long been a barrier to the improvement of education in the country.

Efforts to ensure there is a balance between quality and workload have been frustrated; attempts to tie pay to performance have been thwarted; plans to redeploy staff to where they are needed bear no fruit; and solutions that fix teacher-ratio problems without committing the State to costly recurrent spending have been fought. Indeed, the power of the unions as a single-agenda organisation has proved partly counterproductive even as it appears to achieve something with its constant battles over salaries and allowances.

Don’t get us wrong: We are all for paying teachers their due. Indeed, this newspaper’s position has long been that spending on education and health has to rise and be held at internationally accepted levels if we are to become the middle-income nation we hope to be. And as regards the dispute over the 1997 pay agreement, modified in 2003, our position is in favour of dialogue and compromise by both sides. However, we continue to be persuaded that the conversation between the unions and the Government needs to rise above the strident tenor that has repeatedly been struck over the last decade. 

The teachers’ unions -- Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) -- have repeatedly managed to extract significant concessions with judiciously timed strike threats. Knut’s 1997 deal, enshrined in Legal Notice 534, was arguably one such concession, obtained from a struggling Kanu administration under duress. The battle to give it life in the decade that followed is a cautionary tale on labour relations. Is absolute victory right now the only answer?

Kenya promised its youth education for all by 2015. To keep the promise we must ensure a basic education — all 12 years of it and not just the first eight — for all. We must also have mechanisms to draw back those who fall out or fail in the course of rising through this system. But to provide this, with the facilities it requires and the teacher numbers involved, with the degree of quality required for it to be useful is an expensive undertaking. The only way to approach it is through a managed approach to costs. Investments in priority areas must go before those in others. Improvements to all areas have to be gradual, measurable and justified. And taxpayers, who ultimately are seeking to have their children served well by the education system, must get the best possible deal for the limited resources they put on the table.

Decisions on such things require compromise, which is not possible in an atmosphere where one side insists on fulfilling fanciful election promises at any cost; or where the other insists on ensuring any free money available for education goes directly into higher pay for employees recruited under the strictest and costliest possible terms. This is what the parties expected to spend this weekend in crisis talks should keep in mind. In the long run, a pyrrhic victory over the other party serves no one.

Our investigation into the tragedy of joblessness in Kenya shows the problem with expecting youth to turn to self-employment lies in the quality of schooling they have at their disposal. Even if there were enough jobs to cover all graduates, there are still far too many young people who were failed by the education in basic, secondary or tertiary facilities. Many do not even make it to the examination room, having dropped out earlier due to various social difficulties. Their introduction to the workforce, if they are old enough, or to the pool of unemployed and unemployable is often premature and traumatic. The social problem they present is a challenge as urgent as any this country faces. But finding ways of helping these young people requires us to achieve an education system that works with our limited resources. As President Uhuru Kenyatta has urged, compromise is needed in the national interest and the interest of our young people.