Kenyans may lose it if the recent proposals made to CBC task force is anything to go by.
My concern in the debate is about the egocentric interest displayed by major stakeholders.
Of note are the propositions by parents, teachers’ trade unions and private school entrepreneurs.
Most parents, individually, severally and by representation, feel that the CBC should be domiciled in primary schools. Their main interest in this assertion is to avoid payment of school fees which they fear may follow the Junior Secondary schools’ adoption in secondary schools.
To them, paying fees in grades 7 and 8 is a burden that can be immunised by retaining the grades in primary schools where Free Primary Education is still fashionable.
The primary school teachers’ trade union, KNUT, has not only proposed that grades 7 and 8 be retained in primary schools but has also proposed that the name Junior Secondary be metamorphosised to Senior Primary! Herein is a direct interest that the union would wish to preserve.
In case the grades 7 and 8 are transited to secondary schools, what would follow is the deployment of a significant number of teachers from primary schools to secondary schools.
With that new change of status to the affected teachers, their membership to teachers’ unions will effectively change from KNUT to KUPPET, the trade union for secondary school tutors. This is because the recent CBA that both KNUT and KUPPET signed with government gave room for zoning of teachers.
It placed primary school teachers in KNUT while their secondary school counterparts were heaped in KUPPET. So to avoid losing members’ subscription fee to its rival, KUPPET, KNUT demands that the Junior Secondary be domiciled in primary schools.
Between the teacher unions and parents is the smart businessman called the private schools entrepreneurs. The team that dispenses education for profit.
This team has rooted for the cementing of Junior Secondary school learners in the primary school, where they mostly invest. Hiving off the two classes from primary schools and releasing them to secondary schools is a major financial loss that should not be birthed.
Remember that they are yet to heavily invest in the private secondary school sector as they have done in private primary schools.
I’m not sure whether the learner, who is at the centre of all the debate, has given an opinion. I’m sure, if consulted, most would disagree with the parents, KNUT and education entrepreneurs.
I want to believe that they would give a resounding verdict that theirs is the secondary school. Maybe because of the privileges and prestige that come with being a secondary school scholar. Another display of egocentricity.
What about the teachers on the streets?
As they continue to debate on the pros and cons of hosting and domiciling, their thoughts are mostly fashioned by the unions and parents. Because they belong to both.
With all these, we all believe that the governments interest will be Solomonic.
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