The reduction of education funding as per the present budgetary allocation proposals will disrupt projected future successes of the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) system at its infancy unless increase in funding was considered, educationist experts have warned.
Access to basic education, the scholars said should be treated as a constitutional right and be allocated adequate funds to ensure that the future access to education by Kenyan children was not compromised.
In an interview, two academicians from the private sector Boaz Waruhu and Lina Anyango termed the reduction of funds to the various areas of the education sector including the school feeding programme and the Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) as an abuse of children rights to education.
With education being one of the key areas which the Kenya Kwanza government had promised to treat with dedication, the present reductions in funding to the sector, the educationists felt created the impression that the regime had made an about-turn on its promise.
The scholars noted that those in the education sector had all along expected that the Kenya Kwanza government which sponsored various reforms would respect recommendations from experts who proposed better funding of the education programmes.
“Based on the various engagements and the Kenya Kwanza sponsorship of major studies where experts proposed major restructuring of the education sector coupled with allocation of requisite funding, it is unfortunate that the present budget proposals have reduced monies set for the education sector,’’ said Waruhu.
Reduced budgetary, the scholars insisted was coming at the wrong time given that schools nationally had suffered devastating damage due to flooding and needed huge amounts of money for refurbishments and sometimes entire rebuilding.
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They also raised issue with the government to reduce school feeding budgetary allocations yet experts had confirmed that provision of fund at school level encouraged higher enrolments of learners and their retention at various schools.
Anyango who has been undertaking various research programmes to compare access to education through both private and public schools noted that provision of food in private and boarding schools had been known to ensure better learning by students.
She said that unless the government hired JSS teachers on permanent basis, access of requisite education would be badly compromised because morale among the teachers who were presently overworked would continue to deteriorate.
The difference between pay packages between JSS teachers working in public and private schools, Anyango lamented remained too large with those in the private schools earning between KSh50,000 and KSh100,000 with those in the government taking home a mere KSh17,000.
Teachers in JSS classrooms in the private schools which were fully equipped with various facilities including laboratories and libraries complete with computers, the scholars said taught only two subjects.
This was against teachers in the government schools who were being forced to tackle more than four to five subjects covering subjects which they had not been trained in, said the scholar who insisted that the JSS learners should have been domiciled in secondary schools.
She warned that the present teaching of JSS learners amid low morale among teachers and growing strikes unless tackled would continue to give learners in private schools an edge against a background where all learners were expected to be treated as equals.
“Failure to hire more teachers to teach JSS learners in public schools which could be done mainly through better and adequate budget allocations will mean that imbalances between learners in private and public will continue to widen,” said Anganyo.
The two scholars insisted that upgrades in provision of education to Kenyan children at all levels should be given priority through better funding under the present budget proposals failure to which Kenyan education will be compromised and become regionally and international non-competitive.
By Robert Nyagah
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