Secondary school principals keeping national examination-class students at home for lack of fees will be arrested, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has warned for the millionth time, raising questions about the execution of government directives.
Prof Magoha has said both Class 8 and Form Four candidates who are sitting the KCPE and KCSE national exams in the next three weeks ought to be in school and all principals should comply.
He said a huge percentage of public secondary schools are day institutions that are free, since fees paid only caters for boarding and meals.
“If you find somebody keeping a child who is going to do [national] examination at home, if you are a coward and you don’t want to take action, send the name to me, I will order the police to arrest the principal,” Prof George Magoha, the Education minister has said.
He threatened that “able” parents who do not want to pay school fees will be arrested. School fees is one of the headaches for many parents, partly with the endless fundraisers targeting school fees winners of gaming bets who shout themselves hoarse how school fees is the monster that gives them sleepless nights.
Prof Magoha said 75 percent of Kenya’s secondary schools are day schools, which, according to the Constitution, should be free since the government sends billions of shillings in capitation money.
According to the minister, the government released Sh16.8 billion to all the primary and secondary schools for the nine-week third term that ends at start of March.
A primary school pupil is allocated Sh1,420 annually while every free day secondary school student gets Sh22,244. This leaves parents with about Sh14,000 to pay for day learners every year.
Prof Magoha, a trained surgeon and a former university boss, was repeating the warning for the umpteenth time, returning to the non-working advice that school managers and the parents “negotiate” how fees arrears will be paid.
Well said, Prof Magoha, but barking without a bite is a lazy way of pitting parents against the school managers, creating a supremacy battle that painfully hurts the learner.
A survey of many schools reveals that the principals are so “powerful” they demand “nothing but nil fees balance”. When mwalimu mkuu, no less, makes such orders, learners and their parents tremble, and have to look for fees or keep the students at home.
If the principals have no power to send the learners home, the government should ensure, even without using arrest threats, that learning continues with as few hitches as possible.
School heads are asking for the basic things, including releasing capitation on time, so that boarding can go on without exposing learners to tough conditions that may ignite unrest when the learners demand what schools cannot provide because of empty coffers.
It is unbelievable that a school principal — a teacher, not a director — can have the audacity to ignore a ministry directive with far-reaching consequences to the delivery of learning, not just to the national exam candidates, but to every learner.
Prof Magoha must now shun tough talk, but act, including sending a few school heads to prison, if he must. We advise that this is something that requires a surgery, not a mere dressing of a festering wound.
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