The National Parents Association (NPA) is now asking the government to deploy police officers to schools to forestall hostility from the community after the recent attacks that targeted principals and teachers for supposed poor results in KCSE.
Speaking to Education News this morning, the association National Chairman David Silas Obuhatsa called on the government to move with speed and contain the hooligans attacking principals in the name of protesting the poor results.
He charged that performance is a holistic responsibility of all stakeholders, including parents themselves.
“Parents own schools and have the bigger responsibility when it comes to school management and performance. We cannot allow strangers to keep on trespassing in schools to harass principals on what they don’t know. We are asking Prof Kithure Kindiki (Interior CS) to move with speed and deploy security officers on the ground to secure schools,” said Obuhatsa.
He also wants the Ministry of Education (MoE), through the Basic Education Principal Secretary (PS) Dr Belio Kipsang’, to urgently order elections for Parents Associations (PAs) to bring sanity in schools.
“We are requesting the PS to urgently issue a circular to county and sub-county directors of education, authorizing them to organize and supervise NPA elections to help weed out the expired Parents Associations’ leaders in all education boards and bring in new blood to help bring back sanity in the sector,” said Obuhatsa.
He blamed the current crisis on the expired PAs, observing that parental empowerment and engagement is very critical in managing crises, such as we are seeing now in schools.
According to Obuhatsa, the main goal of NPA is to carry out Parental Empowerment and Engagement (PEE) for the purpose of creating awareness on the role of parents in the management of schools, though the association is facing financial difficulties.
He therefore asked the government to consider funding NPA national office activities to enable it deliver its PEE agenda.
By Roy Hezron
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