New schools compromise education in Kakamega
It is now emerging that the construction of new schools in Kakamega County and other neighboring counties is one of the major factors leading to the shortage of teachers and the poor performance being witnessed in most public schools.
According to the Teachers Service Commission – TSC director in Kakamega County Mrs. Janet Onyango, Kakamega County is experiencing the highest number of new schools being put up and thus compromising the education standards in the county due to lack of sufficient teaching staff and infrastructure.
Mrs. Onyango who was speaking at Namundera mixed secondary school in Navakholo constituency during the school’s annual general meeting, said that the nation falls short of 80,000 teachers while Kakamega county alone has a shortage of over 3,000 primary school teachers and 1,300 secondary schools teachers.
“This shortage is biting and it is made worse by the fact that schools are being opened every other day. Before a new school picks up, another new one being erected within the same locality hence forcing TSC to pull out teachers from the schools that are not yet established with very low population.” Said Mrs. Onyango
She added that this move has also contributed to the poor performance that is being witnessed in most schools since a teacher is forced to start a new school even though the performance in previous schools has not yet improved.
“When a new school is registered I am forced to remove a teacher from an already established school where a teacher would help produce better results but move him or her to new CDF schools forcing them to start at a decimal point making the teacher even retire without ever scoring an ‘A’,” added Mrs. Onyango.
She further added that despite the shortage, TSC is in the process of formulating a new law that will ensure that school heads that employ unqualified teachers are sued to ensure that all students receive quality education.
“As TSC we do not want unqualified teachers in schools and as much as schools are using school leavers, action will now be taken to heads that use unqualified teachers.” warned Mrs. Onyango.
The shortage of teachers has remained a big challenge in the country leading to numerous calls from teachers unions to TSC and the government to address the issue that has become a major challenge to the education sector for a long time.
Parents warned against reaching consensus with the people who defile or impregnate and marry their school-going children and eventually ruin the future of such children.
Most of the high number of drop outs of girls in school is caused by early pregnancies and early marriages in most regions of Kakamega County.
This has always remained a menace as most of the perpetrators are left unpunished leaving the girl child vulnerable as the parents are compromised with little bribes to drop the cases in the name of settling the matter out of the court or decline to offer evidence against the perpetrators.
