KUPPET Calls For boarding schools to be Eliminated as it Roots For CBC
KUPPET Calls For boarding schools to be Eliminated as it Roots For CBC
Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) has demanded the elimination of boarding schools
Through their secretary general, Akello Misori, the teachers stated that boarding schools contributed nothing to the country’s education.
The teachers asked the task team recently created by President William Ruto to assess the competency-based curriculum to consider whether boarding schools in Kenya should be eliminated.
“As we applaud and appreciate that the task force working on the reforms has come at the right time, there are certain issues that it must address,” Misori said.
The secretary-general spoke during the general assembly of Kuppet’s Machakos chapter at Machakos University on Saturday, October 22.
Putting children in boarding schools makes education expensive due to the categorization of schools, which increases the cost of education in public schools.
Misori stated that public schools are more expensive than private ones.
“With this regard, Kuppet pushes for de-categorization of schools so that we remove the idea of national, extra-county, county, and subcounty schools because these terms appear very derogatory and discriminatory,” he said.
Misori stated that the task committee should also examine school funding.
The unionist stated that since education is a constitutional right and a public good, it must not be exposed to commercialization interests in which Kenyans pay high prices for things that do not provide value, such as boarding schools.
“We want to move to de-boarding of our schools so that we do with education where we define what a school is by the number of children or learners in that school. This is what should give the school a category,” Misori said.
The unionist stated that schools must be provided with adequate operating finances.
Boarding schools are the cause of teachers’ requests for overtime. For example, a boarding school principal is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He stated, “You don’t even have a break.”
According to him, this is why teachers today have psychological issues.
He said that Ruto’s government should put more money into education and eliminate boarding schools so that day schools are the norm.
Misori stated that in other parts of the world, Kenya was renowned for its boarding schools, despite their lack of value.
“We take young children to our local schools. They walk even two kilometers or three, yet we give a lot of comfort to older ones by taking them to boarding schools,” he said.
He stated that the CBC’s lack of funding should be a thing of the past under the next administration.
The unionist asserted that the new curriculum was the best option.
Misori said that CBC would give every child a chance to improve their skills and talents.
He criticized the current paradigm of educational capitation, calling it obsolete.
He noted that this year, teachers earned only Sh200 per student for sports and curriculum-related activities. According to Kuppet, this indicates that Sh1,000 was retained.
“Capitation must also be based on data that is accurate so that we stop leakages that make our processes clumsy,” Misori said.
“We would wish that, while education financing is being addressed, then there should be an attempt to improve current capitation model.”
Among the topics pursued by the union, he said, are the promotion of teachers and the payment of hardship compensation to those who teach in dry and semi-arid regions.
Misori stated they are pushing for compensation negotiation because the 2016–2021 CBA only provided allowances to principals and department leaders. Basic teacher compensation was not addressed.
Machakos district Kuppet’s executive secretary, Musembi Katuku, stated that in 2019 the organization unsuccessfully petitioned Parliament to include Mwala subcounty and portions of Kalama in teacher hardship allowances.
