Tag Archives: Government

#PERFORMANCE CONTRACT

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teachers work

“Teachers I am not yet done with you.” That is the message the government is trying to mutely pass to Kenyan teachers. The ministry of education intends to implement new education regulation which will pin down the teacher who is already sick and tired of intimidation from the government.
The new regulation requires the teacher to sign a performance contract with his/her employer who is the Teacher Service Commission. The Cabinet Secretary is of the opinion that over 50% of the teachers countrywide are not working. That is a statement that surprises many teachers when they are going an extra mile to do what can be done for learners to pass the examination.
It is with deep sorrow that currently teachers have not received their September 2015 salary. The ministry of education should be reminded that teachers are already in “a performance contract” be in the know that it is only a teacher who has to prepare a series of professional documents for teaching before entering the classroom.
The schemes of work are prepared for the whole term which guides the teacher on the work to be covered on a particular period of time. In addition to that, a teacher prepares a daily lesson plan for each subject to be taught, which gives a step by step guide on how to deliver the content therein. It is also mandatory that the same teacher prepares lesson notes for each subject to be taught.
And to intensify the whole matter the teacher is supposed to keep a record of the work covered everyday and a progress record for each learner.
All the mentioned documents are inspected by the officials from the ministry of education when they visit the institution. After the official working hours the teacher is expected to sit down and prepare all aforementioned documents for the following day.
When the government is grumbling about the performance; we wonder if they have forgotten the huge numbers of students in classrooms. It is very unreasonable that a single teacher can handle 70-100 children in a class alone. To heighten the matter, the learning conditions are terrible, the learning resources are not available and the teacher is required to improvise and use locally available material as teaching aids.
Did the world know that teaching profession is one in many professions? And yes they are! Because, they, at one point become nurses to the pupils in class. When a child falls sick it is the duty of the teacher to attend to the child. Teachers are counselors. Parents have left their responsibility to teachers. The already overworked teacher is required to spare his/her time to offer guiding and counseling to the learners. Teachers are lawyers, preachers and even parents to the children that they teach. When parents stopped doing their responsibility we saw the outcome at Eldoret and recently in Nairobi where school going children were caught in a night club. That was direct effect of the long strike that took place and children became indiscipline. Teachers now are faced with a challenge to rectify such behaviours.
If the teacher is to be subjected to more performance contract, oh! Because they are already in a contract, it would be fair if it could be in conditions. The teacher to learner ratio should closely be looked into. And with that effectively dealt with, the teacher will be able to handle the learners well. It is important that the government ensure that learning materials and resources are available for both the teacher and the learner. The question still lingers why would the teacher still be subjected to prepare all the documents mentioned earlier? It would be prudent the poor teacher be left to have only the chalk and the pen.
It is an allowable effort that the Cabinet Secretary wants to streamline the education sector. But such efforts should not entirely be meant to intimidate the teachers who are already doing a commendable work. Such regulations should at least encounter various consultations. Let teachers breath they are already in a performance contract.

HOW FREE IS FREE?

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Hold on! It is in uncountable setting that I have had this uncertainty. And I would like someone to cloudless expound to me the real meaning of a word in Oxford Dictionary which is not vivid enough to me in terms of its denotation. My scrutiny lie heavily in the word ‘free’ as used in Free Primary Education, commonly referred to as FPE. The ‘free’ in that version bring a lot of contradictions to many parents who have children in Public Primary Schools. These children in public primary schools are required to access education freely as stipulated in FPE policy. Children are considered to be anybody less than eighteen years of age, children (Act 2001).
Just to recollect the history of FPE it goes back to 1974 and later in 1979 when the Kenya Government launched the initiative.
That initiative was a new dawn for both parents and children.
The FPE initiative had innumerable challenges and collapsed only to be revived by NARK government in 2002 which was their campaign pledge for voters. In that case therefore, in January 2003 President Mwai Kibaki reintroduced the Free Primary Education.
The mystery still lingers, how free is free? It has been in many occasions when the parents have received their children back in their houses. It is for a fact that children have been taken back home asserting they have been sent to collect activity fee. The parents are required to pay the activity fee yearly pausing a question whether the government has exempted it? It is also comic that parents are required to pay other funds which amounts to a lot of money yearly. The schools which are understaffed employ teachers who are paid by the PTA that leading to emergence of PTA money. I also actualized that, a student who is a new comer is required to pay desk fee and admission fee. The same student is also required to pay money for interview which gives a hint the academic level of the learner.
In addition, there are schools where parents are required to pay other school bills like electricity which administrators allege it caters for cost of pumping water. Schools which are fortunate to have computers parents are required to pay computer fee and in other situations parents expected to buy photocopier papers. In most of Public Schools there are days where children are supposed to put on P.E kits uniform which is sold in the school store. These uniforms are overpriced. As that is not enough parents also pay report book money so as to access their children’s examination results.
And it will be imprecise to overlook the monthly examination fee. The examination is done monthly and in other occasions after a fortnight. If a child fails to pay that money he/she is not allowed in school premises leave alone the classroom. The parents are also asked to contribute money to pay the school watchman or the cook if there is a feeding program. Now the tuition issue that makes the Education Cabinet Secretary want to spit up. His directives have always fallen on deaf ears because children still pay money for remedial class.
Apart from wanting to really know what ‘free’ means in free Primary Education Policy, the initiative in question has faced many challenges. The increased enrollment in schools is demanding increment of physical facilities. The classes are crowded and the classroom teachers have to handle more than one hundred children in one classroom. The government should not leave the school administrators to go to bed having a disturbing migraine wondering where to place the children.
I wish ‘free’ would be free or alternatively have the word attached to another connotation altogether. Children from badly off families are not getting full access to their rights of education. If the government claims to be committed to providing Free Primary Education to Public Primary Schools, then it should be unconditionally free. The Cabinet Secretary of Education Jacob Kaimenyi put it incontrovertible that the government will be paying the National Examination fee for children in Public Schools. With that said, I reckon the government should take possession of full responsibility to pay all the examination money for children from lower primary to secondary school.
Let the parents be spared from the pressure of paying fees having in mind that many children in Public Schools come from poverty-stricken families. My esteemed government, it is a heyday for Kenyan children.