Tag Archives: parents

Scholarship

Posted on by Standard 2

It is incredibly surprising that most of students who do well in National examination in Kenya come from poor families. These are families which the parents cannot be able to afford three meals in a day.  After primary school, such students end up doing manual jobs so as to be able to support their parents and siblings.  If these students do not get help from relatives or well-wishers their dreams get shattered and we end up losing very important individuals in the society. The social media has played a big role in ensuring that needy and bright students are brought to public’s domain so that they can get necessary help.  My goal in this article is to highlight the impact of scholarship to such children and encourage more donors and well-wishers to continue supporting them.

However, my driving force to write this piece is the commendable work being done by Maendeleo Foundation which offers scholarship for both Secondary and University students in Kenya. Over the years the Organization has offered sponsorship to students right from Secondary to college/university level. The students undergo an interview to ascertain the level of their vulnerability before they are offered the assistance. An interview is one of the most effective strategy to ensure that you get the right candidates for sponsorship. This is due to the fact that most people are malicious and hence you cannot just trust what they tell you. Therefore, even if it means visiting their homes to ascertain the truth then it can be of great help. Individuals, churches, banks and also Organizations are doing a lot to make sure that the needy/bright children are given educational support.

Students who get sponsorship for university are lifted the burden of taking loans to cater for their university education. It is noted that most of students work several jobs over the course of their college and graduate school years in order to pay for their classes, books and hostel. This certainly detracts students from the time they are required to study and learn and hence academic performance can greatly suffer, (Community Force, 2017). Some other students engage in immoral behaviour to enable them to raise tuition fees and also hostel money. In the recent years Kenya has lost many promising young people in college and university. Their causes of death could be in one way or other another be associated with lack of finances while at the college or minimal support from the parents. There is also a certain percentage of students who do not graduate from college/university because they are not able to raise the tuition fee. On the other hand, students who manage to get sponsorship are able to attend to their classes well minus fear of being taken out of class due to fees arrears.

The needy students who are supported to either join secondary or universities are empowered such that after school they can change situation in their community. Therefore, sponsorship of needy/bright students is one way to reduce poverty rate in Kenya. The sponsorship mostly comes in handy with mentorship programmes for students so that they can remain focused in their education. Maendeleo Foundation for instance, conducts mentorship programme for sponsored students in secondary school every vacation. The learners a meant to review their goals and given support and guidance where necessary. Generally, there is a close monitoring of sponsored students by parents, mentors and the sponsors.

Sponsorship is an effective channel to contribute your help to individuals and communities in need, (Darrah, p Nov 2016). It is a pathway to touch a child’s life in a special way and changing their destiny for good. Students who get these sponsorships work very hard and most of them emerge successful citizens who impart the nation positively.  As mentioned earlier, sponsorship is a way of combating poverty and nurturing responsible citizens.

The efforts being done by sponsors cannot go unmentioned since Kenyan students are benefitting in a big way. The living standards of many families have been improved as the sponsored students succeed in their education.  However, the sponsorship slots given to needy students is not enough and hence the need for sponsors to increase the number in order to reach many students.

References

Appeal for Bible Camp Scholarship for Needy Children. (2022) Retrieved April 2022, from / https://churchletters.org/church-letters church-donation-stewardship-letters/appeal-for-bible-camp-scholarship-for-needy-children

Community Force. ( 2017) ‍ The impact and importance of scholarships.

www.communityforce.com/the-impact-and-importance-of-scholarships/

Darrah, P. (2016 .6 reasons to sponsor a child. WordPress. www.goabroad.org/why-sponsor-a-child

#PERFORMANCE CONTRACT

Posted on by Standard Reply

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.