Rescue parents, students by enforcing ban on tuition

Stranded students in Kisumu after they were sent home following unrest. [Collins Oduor, Standard]

The fundamentals and values of a holistic education no longer matter in Kenya. That there exists totally useless competition for ranking and mean grades between well-run private schools and neglected public schools tells it all.

Successive Education Cabinet Secretaries have purported to issue edicts that head teachers, county education officers and their union officials ignore without fear of consequences. Take Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu's latest ban on early morning and evening preps for instance.

He might as well have been whistling in the dark. As matters stand, no head teacher heard him. The Basic Education Act 2015 prescribes reporting and departure times for students. The Act specifies that classes start at 8am and end at 3.30pm. Drafters of the Act silently acknowledged that there were other aspects of a fulfilling life besides academics. These include rest, play or exercise for physical and mental development, and socialising.

A child who gets to school at 5am, leaves at 6.30pm and does homework until midnight, then wakes up at 3am to prepare is likely to become an introvert susceptible to depression. Such people lack the ability to cope with tough situations later in life. Teachers create crises to extort money from harassed parents who bear costs that can be avoided or reduced. Public schools charge between Sh600 and Sh1,000 per month for tuition. A school with, say, 600 students would therefore make between Sh360,000 and Sh600,000 per month.

Schools also charge Sh100 per learner for every exam (sometimes two in a week), yet the learners do not take possession of the exam papers. Education is touted as life's greatest equaliser. Unfortunately, it is the most effective disruptor that successive governments have used to ensure the majority continue to wallow in ignorance, hence becoming susceptible to political manipulation.

The demand for textbooks, some which might not even be necessary, is strenuous to parents. Does it make sense to demand five different textbooks for a single subject, say mathematics? If a teacher can't explain a concept, textbooks won't.

A government that professes free education then proceeds to erect hurdles in the way to its acquisition must be called out. The government cannot create situations that put bright but needy students at the mercy of well-wishers and then claim it is fighting illiteracy. Five decades later, we are still fighting vices our forefathers identified in 1963; poverty, illiteracy and diseases, with no success in sight.

Mr Chagema is a Sub Editor at The Standard.