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Kenya: Secondary Education Won't Be Free, Says PS
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The East African Standard (Nairobi)
16 October 2007
Posted to the web 15 October 2007
Samuel Otieno
Nairobi
The Ministry of Education has reiterated that the Government will not offer free secondary school education beginning next year.
Education Permanent Secretary, Prof Karega Mutahi, said the Government would instead waive tuition fees in all public secondary schools.
"The Government has set aside a budget of Sh2.9 billion to take care of tuition fees for terms one and two for next year," said Mutahi.
The PS' remarks were contained in a speech read on his behalf by a senior Ministry of Education officer, Mr Michael Ojiambo, on Monday, during the Forty senior Education International and Action Aid representatives' workshop in Nairobi.
The remarks further complicate confusion between President Kibaki and the Ministry of Education over the implementation of free secondary education from next year.
While Kibaki is rooting for free secondary education should he be elected president next year, Ministry of Education officials are speaking of affordable secondary education.
At the same time, the introduction of free secondary education pledged by the three presidential candidates - Kibaki, (PNU), Mr Raila Odinga (ODM), and Mr Kalonzo Musyoka (ODM-Kenya) - has received backing.
Yesterday the head of education, Action Aid International, Mr David Archer, welcomed the proposal. He said it would increase access to schools.
He, however, noted that the implementation of free secondary education should be worked out in a long-term basis of between a period of ten years.
The NGOs blamed the dwindling quality of education in poor countries on policies world financial bodies pushed.
Harming quality of education
They have thus teamed up with local teachers' trade unions to pressure the Government to reject the policies that are harmful to the quality of education.
Participants accused the World Bank of actively advocating bad policies.
Archer said national education budgets were being unnecessarily constrained by macro-economic positions imposed by the International Monetary Fund.
"The IMF ideology controls the discourse and thinking in ministries of finance to impose a freeze on teacher recruitment whilst the World Bank comes with that of engaging non-professional teachers," he said.
Archer said governments were faced with a direct contradiction as a result of the policies.
"They are under international pressure to expand primary school enrolments but at the same time they are under even more powerful international pressure to limit public spending and avoid employing more teachers," he said.
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The result, he said, is predictable with governments either imposing wage freezes, imposing recruitment freezes and accepting large class sizes, introducing contract teachers, who can be hired and fired at will or bringing non-professionals into the workforce with few qualifications and low salaries. Kenya National Union of Teachers Secretary General, Mr Francis Ng'ang'a, said teachers would reject the policies being imposed by IMF and World Bank.
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| Copyright © 2007 The East African Standard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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