By Joseph Okumu Otsyulah
The basic education for an individual is the most crucial and deserving as it is the basis upon which the subsequent educational layers are built.
We are what we are because of our basic firm foundation that we received. Any government gambling with this type of education is courting future trouble for the citizens.
The basic education should be guarded jealously and supported fully in order to ensure a firm and dependable foundation not only in the education sector but also among the citizenship.
This year’s advertisement for Primary Teacher Training Colleges intake and subsequent re-advertisement which yielded less than a thousand candidates in the country had a singular mistake which would indicate that the basic education teacher entry is being gagged by some individuals.
These individuals don’t seem to understand that there are people who have no other option on failing to attain the minimum university entry score.
The mistake that there was which requires correction was the entry grade requirements. It is unexplainable to insist that a primary school diploma trainee should be having a mean grade of C plain and above when all the other diplomas have their entry mean grade of C- minus.
As if that is not enough the teacher trainer is required to have scored a C plain in the rest of the subjects!
There are well known teachers and head teachers who very powerful administrators in our high ranking and well are performing public primary schools who were trained after scoring grade of D+ plus in their KCSE.
We have lecturers in the universities who scored a mean grade of D+ plus and are now doctors with PhDs. We have such people in the public sector some even in your boardrooms where you pass restrictions that discriminate on their academic peers.
Why should we curtail our young Kenyans from pursuing education just because they failed to score a mean of C plain in say Mathematics or some subject which they will never even teach?
I speak for the rural poor. Teaching is the only career people in the village see and hope to become after form four. I am a living testimony. After my form four I attained the entry score for university entry which used to take about a year or more.
When my late father heard that they had advertised for teacher training colleges’ applications, he excitedly insisted that I apply which I reluctantly did and was taken.
People in the villages are modelled by teachers because those are all they meet and see. Let us give them a chance they that fate put them in the rural settings.
My humble request to the stakeholders is that the entry grade for primary teacher training intake should be harmonized with the rest of the entry grades for other Kenyan recognized diplomas so that we don’t kill the ambition of the many poor Kenyans living in the rural areas.
Statistics show that those who go for primary teaching come from the rural poor.
The rich take their children to train for more significant courses that would realize upward mobility making them policy makers against their ill-fated poverty stricken counterparts who scored the same or even better grades in form four.
The ground is not levelled!
I petition and challenge our Kenyan legislators to look in to this matter objectively and come to the aid of their voters, my poor colleagues at the country side.
The lives of many poor Kenyans will be ruined just because of a policy that was made in some boardroom in the capital city.
Dr. Otsyulah has been a primary school teacher trainer for a long period. He is currently a lecturer and head of department at Kaimosi Friends University College
