Marked as political and digressing from this year’s theme, the play has exposed the work done by Ministry of Education (MoE) officers, Sub-County Quality Assurance and Standards Officers, and Sub-County Education Directors.
Education News has established that many of these officers attend co-curricular activities in their areas of jurisdiction. It is claimed that some appear during opening sessions, sign the visitors’ books and hand over allowances only to monitor the progress through calls trained on the event chairpersons.
In in-depth scrutiny of the Butere Girls’ play, an objective critic would wonder how the item progressed through the various levels in the Western region up to the nationals. The argument is, was the play in tandem with this year’s secondary school drama theme?
The theme for the avoidance of doubt was leveraging technology to nurture talents while inculcating values for socio-economic prosperity.
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Some of the audience versed in plays from Kakamega were quick to wonder how the play, full of direct criticism of the government and scripted and directed by a non-teacher, could be given the green light.
“I wondered whether the adjudicators were versed in this year’s theme. Some plays were left, yet they were scripted around the theme,” said Makutwo, a retired drama enthusiast.
The Ministry of Education (MoE) mandates co-curricular activities, while TSC handles teacher management. The most glaring mistake is whether the MoE brigade from the sub-county to the regional office was aware of the play’s content and, to a greater extent, this year’s theme.
From the look of things, it is as if the officers and adjudicators were carried away by the ululations and jubilations the audience gave the play while it was on stage. Another possibility is that when they learnt that the play was scripted and directed by a politician with a national outlook, their judgment skills were abducted, only to take the play to the next level.
Under TSC circular number 14/2018, read and enforced together with TSC/Circular No. 3/2010, section 2 explicitly stipulates that persons not registered as teachers, including those whose names have been expunged from the TSC register, should not be engaged to supervise and coach learners in co-curricular and other listed school activities.
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The question is, is Mr Malala a registered teacher? Again, why was his rationale for targeting Butere Girls and not Isongo Secondary School or Chebuyusi Boys?
Again, what would have happened if Moi Girls had created a play, ‘Kumi bila break’, written and directed by a Kenya Kwanza politician(of Mr Malala’s calibre)? What values would we be claiming to inculcate in our learners?
It is time for both MoE and TSC to become more vigilant about what is happening in our schools. Failure to do so will lead to a lack of political neutrality in our institutions, which will be a recipe for chaos.
By Naboth Murunga.
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