Education is an expensive affair that needs proper mobilisation of resources from a nation's industry and parents and proper criteria of the utilisation of government funding.
Differentiated Unit Cost as implemented at our university level aims at funding expensive college programmes, especially science programmes, by providing more funds.
Should this be adopted in schools in the same form as it is in universities then the sciences will turn out to be the most expensive subjects and will benefit the most.
In particular, the nature of senior secondary teaching presents a unique challenge.
The pathways, the subjects that lead to career development, will be quite expensive to run. The ministry will require more than government funding.
For example, the cost of science subjects is not the same as studying arts or business.
Chemicals are quite expensive and even in the current secondary set up, some schools are not able to afford the materials and students end up interacting with the apparatus and laboratory equipment during an examination.
Now should this proposal be implemented then I suppose any science subject will be funded a bit higher compared to subjects in which only books are needed.
The funding to teach literature, for example, cannot be equal to that of teaching chemistry.
It will be a great idea and a step ahead in solving the funding problem and ensuring we address the resource gap in schools.
However, we need to cast the net wider because education is expensive.
The government needs to expand the scope of looking for funds by fundraising from industry, the main beneficiaries of the human resource, the end product.
Corporate funders like Equity, Barclays and other commercial banks are doing it as a social responsibility, but the government needs to look into developing a policy that will compel the cooperate world into giving a share of their return to support education because it is the backbone of our economy.
Every company should be persuaded either voluntarily or by law to contribute to an education fund that should support secondary or university education.
The government should also consider making parents contribute to the education of their children. The free primary and secondary education model is too expensive for the government. Cost-sharing should be revived.
We should not be told that education is free yet there are hidden costs.
To eliminate the hidden cost the government should be open about the cost of education.
The perfect solution is to have government and parents share the expenses.
AKELLO MISORI (The writer is the Secretary General KUPPET)
