Amani National Congress Party Leader Musalia Mudavadi has asked schools not to exploit parents through forced buying of school uniforms and other boarding requirements from selected suppliers. Reacting to reports that some schools are directing parents to which suppliers to shop the uniforms and other items from, Musalia said the selected stores are taking advantage of the parents and selling the items at an inflated cost. “There have also been some corrupt schemes by some Heads of schools to defraud parents who are already struggling due to the Covid-19 by forcing them to buy mattresses, bed sheets, cutlery and even blankets from per-selected suppliers. Parents are required to pay the money to the schools, so that the schools procure the same for the children at prices that are twice the market price,” he said.
Terming the move as illegal, Mudavadi said parents should be allowed to purchase the items from outlets that offer competitive pricing without being coerced into purchasing from a specific supplier. At the same time, Mudavadi asked the Government to prepare well in advance for the expected double intake in schools in the year 2023 and 2024. The 2022 presidential candidate said the introduction of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), currently being rolled out and the education calendar disruption by Covid-19 has greatly affected the education system and that if proper planning is not done, the system may crush come the year 2023. Speaking when he attended service at St Teresa of Calcutta Catholic Church Embakasi, Nairobi on Sunday, Mudavadi said the CBC system will see a double in-take in secondary schools in January 2023 and 2024 and this will strain the already constrained resources.“Double intake will require double classrooms, toilets, desks, food and teachers. For most big schools with more than five streams, we will require the same number of classrooms to make the double intake happen in 2023 and a similar additional number of classrooms in 2024. No resources have been set aside for this,” he said.
At the moment, most schools are grappling with the increased intake occasioned by the Government policy of full transition from primary to secondary schools.
The Government has, however, allocated Sh4.2 billion in the 2021/2022 financial year to expand infrastructure. At the cost of Sh1.2 million to build a classroom as provided by the Ministry of Public Works, this will roughly build 3,500 additional classrooms.
“This is a drop in the ocean. It is not even enough to get every school one additional classroom. We also need to increase the numbers of teachers in secondary schools to meet the need. The Teachers Service Commission has only been replacing the dead and retired teachers for a number of years now,” he said.
Mudavadi revealed that he is in talks with stakeholders in the education sector on how best to mobilize resources locally and internationally to create the required infrastructure and hire teachers to avert the disaster that the country is walking into.
“Other than the economic recovery, I am aware that this will be the most important challenge that I will face should I be elected president in August next year,” he told the faithful. Equally, the former Vice President sympathized with parents whose children have been shortchanged in the ongoing Form One admission. “The EMIS system has been abused by crooked education officers and school principals to short-change children from needy families. Parents deserve an audit of how the system failed, leading to the mess where parents found their children missing from the list of students in the schools where they had been admitted. Those found to have been involved in the scam must be held to account,” he said.