By Festus Muinde
The Ministry of Education has sounded a warning to school heads against single sourcing of school materials and instead urged them to engage all stakeholders in their acquisitions for healthy market competition.
Through a circular to the Regional and County directors of Education, Education PS Julius Jwan said they have received communication from the Competition Authority of Kenya that schools are demanding parents to purchase stationery from specific brand owners, which is against the provision of section 21 of the Competition Act 2010.
The act discourages fixation of purchase or selling price or any other trading condition, allocation of suppliers’ specific goods and services, collusion in tendering among others.
This happens against a backdrop of outcry from parents on the high cost of particular brands of text books and other materials which some schools have been insisting they must buy for their children.
It is now emerging that this was not the ministry’s directive as some school heads would claim when asked by some parents if they could purchase alternative cheaper stationery from other suppliers.
In the same breadth, there have been complaints of unfair allocation of tenders in some schools regarding provision of goods or respective services.
According to Education CS George Magoha, the government released Shs.19 Billion in July this year to primary and secondary schools across the country as capitation funds. This amount was destined to among other things buy the required school materials.
Data obtained by Education News from the ministry of education website shows that in 2019, Kenya had 10,487 secondary schools among which 8,933 were public and 1,554 were private.
Similarly in 2020, the country had 32,437 primary education centres. This translates to over 9,000 secondary school principals and 24,000 primary school head teachers.
