I am dismayed by the increasing number of students in this country who are unable to join high school because of lack of school fees and other necessities.
DISCLAIMER
With all due respect, I sympathize and empathize with the less privileged in our society and all measures should be put in place to ensure there social and economic well being is uplifted.
This year, I feel wev had so many such cases, one after the other.some 10yrs ago such cases were few.This paints a very hopeless picture of the new generation of parents, a generation which is enlightened but unable to plan for the future of there kids.our parents were ilitrate but even in polygamus families quite a significant number of people were educated.unless the student is in a vulnerable group like orphans, or from children’s home or a street kid or a child whose parents is incapacitated, the parent ought to cater for his/her child’s education.if you have a bright child who scored highly in exams, its upon you the parent to make arrangements in advance and look for funds in whichever way possible and ensure your child joins the best school.failure to do that you will be failing your child directly and history will never recognize anything like" I was poor"
What kind of precedence and trend will we be setting when we pay for fee and cater for all other necessities of a student with both parents who are capable and are not incapacitated in whichever way?aren’t we encouraging laziness and dependency syndrome? What message will we be conveying to that parent whose kid is a candidate next year?
Regarding the vulnerable group, the county government should lias with the member of Parliament in advance so that by the time examination result are out they would have been captured and planned for at the constituency level through CDF programme.This might not entirely get rid of the issue but it will significantly mitigate the outcome pro actively.
Those candidates highlighted by the media are just but a few, we have copious such cases that have not been highlighted, maybe worse.
My thoughts but I stand to be corrected.
when I was very young in the late 80s I remember the local headmaster, chief and even DO would simply come to my grandpa and tell him " mzee, these boys have excelled in their primary exams but they have no fees, are you just going to watch them drop out of school"? and just like that dozens of boys would have their fee paid by the old man
Fast forward to the 90s…and my grandpa who lived in the middle of nowhere became the first person to have electricity in that area.
In the late 90s grandpa had piped water…again the source was kilometres away.
about 10years ago I got my first serious job and decided to renovate his village house…I was late. someone had already renovated it, built a new bathroom and replaced all the furniture.
exactly a year ago I received a call that the old man had just had a serious heart failure …i just made one phone call and a chopper was availed to airlift him from his home to aga Khan kisumu…he survived and is still healthy at 95.
what am saying is that the people who have been helping out my grandpa are not his own kids, but doctors, politicians, businessmen and teachers he took to school. Am not saying that they owe him anything but they truly appreciate what he has done for them…i believe in giving back to society. Whatever you have is from this society…give some of it back!
Now, If you are a Kenyan and can afford to spare any amount please please lets come together and keep these kids in school. My school alumni association is paying fees for about 20 to 30 kids every year…we want to increase the number…I believe talkers here can initiate such in their former schools and help keep these kids in school
Good insight here.but the question is how sustainable is it?we have hundreds of thousands of kids who are unable to join form one because of monetary issues. While I appreciate you and your colleagues for what you doing, 30students is a drop in the ocean.we need to have a sustainable, long lasting and permanent or near permanent solution, and in my view well wishers cannot be relied or listed in the long list of permanent solutions. The solutions lies in the whole cascade of governance.In fact by doing that we will be tolerating, encouraging and perpetuating mediocre
The media instead of confronting relevant county leaders with such cases they are busy looking for traffic. They are part of the problem. They should show viewers what they have done in regards to what they are airing
There is a very good reason why we have things like bursaries, helb and likes of wings to fly… Even in the so called old days ppl went to school courtesy of the community/ well wishers. What we are experiencing is not a new .
Kenya is a poor country. Ignore all attempts at tweaking metrics to rebase it as a middle class country. A sizeable portion of the population live in extreme poverty. Not that they aren’t trying to improve their lot but the country is configured in such a way that they are constrained a lot. If you think this are empty words, try starting a business today or apply for a job in the govt if you don’t have tall relatives.
I agree we have been having this challenge even before, the irony is that now they are many more than before.The cdf program is not being utilized effectively. And for the record am against the idea of relying on well wishers as a society because they are seasonal, temporary and support only a handful of students. And if we list wiell wishers along side cdf, helb etc we will be deceiving ourselves.