Schools across the country are set to reopen early next week. Learning may be affected if the proposal by the secondary school heads to increase the annual school fees is not adopted.
The school heads, who are currently converged in Mombasa in their annual meeting, under the umbrella of the Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association, are demanding a school fees increment of up to Sh 8,000 per student citing a rise in the cost of living.
Further, they demand a raise in the government capitation from the current Sh22,244 to Sh30,000 per student.
According to the proposal that has been forwarded to the Ministry of Education by Kessha, fees in national or extra county schools is set to be raised to Sh91,646 from Sh75,798, an increase of Sh15,848.
In addition, the school heads want school fees for the extra county schools raised by Sh17,773 from Sh62,679 to Sh80,452.
In July last year, the government slashed schools fees citing the shortening of the school calendar from 39 weeks to 30 weeks.
Students in national and extra-county schools based in major towns like Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret, Thika and Nyeri saw their school fees reduced from Sh53,554 to Sh45,000. A reduction of Sh8,554.
Those from other boarding schools plus the extra county schools located in towns other than those mentioned above had a reduction in fee of Sh 5,535 from Sh40,535 to Sh35,000 per year.
The special needs students benefited from a reduction of Sh1,930 paying Sh10,860 from the initial Sh12,790.
The school fees reduction was set to last till the end of the 2021 academic calendar, which came to a close in March.
The government recently released Sh16 billion to secondary schools, this being the first tranche of the funds sent by the government annually to schools to cater for the school fees subsidy.
The government allocates Sh22,244 per student in the public secondary schools and Sh1,420 per student in public primary schools towards Free Day Secondary Education and Free Primary Education.
The secondary school heads feel the amount is too small given the rising inflation.
They say most of the funds are channelled to infrastructure, medical insurance, purchase of textbooks, science and mathematics improvement programme and funding of co-curricular activities.
This leaves them with fewer funds to run the daily activities.
According to the school principals, the funds released by the government are based on the figures in the National Education Management System that gives a record of the number of students in a particular school.
The figures, the heads say, are not accurate as they are not commensurate with the real number of students in their schools.
The figures in the system have not been updated since 2018 as some of the students were not on board after failing to provide the requisite documents like birth certificates.
In addition, NEMIS only incorporates students that are below 18 years hence, leaving out older students. Any student who hits 18 is removed from the system.
They also cite a rise in the prices of basic commodities. This they say, makes it difficult for them to run the school activities smoothly.
In addition, with the spiralling inflation, they say there’s a need for salary review for the school staff hence, urgent need for school fees review to accommodate the changes in salary, failure to which the principals say they will be unable to run the schools.
The demands by the school heads are implausible.
Coming against a backdrop of the spiralling cost of living, their demands are ill-timed and in bad taste.
Many households are striving to stay afloat amid the tough economic times.
The schools may be justified in demanding a raise in government capitation.
Demanding for a school fee increment from the parents, however, should not arise at this point as most families are striving to survive.
Even as the schools demand more funds, they must be accountable for the funds already disbursed by the government or paid by parents.
Coming up with an arbitrary figure to be adopted by all the schools may not be appropriate as the schools operate in different environments.
A thorough audit of the schools' accounts must be done by independent bodies before more funds are disbursed.
Any heads found to have misappropriated school funds should be held liable which may include summary dismissal.
In addition, the schools must be trained on cost-cutting and cost-sharing to ensure that they stay afloat and ultimately, avoid transferring a huge financial burden to the parents.
Many schools have huge chunks of land that lie idle.
Such pieces of land can be converted for farming, for instance, rearing poultry, dairy cows, rabbits and pigs.
These may be sold to supplement the school's budget. Schools can also plant vegetables, onions, and tomatoes both for subsistence and commercial use.
It is quite derisory to find schools with many hectares of arable land spending a lot of money to purchase vegetables from the market while they can easily cultivate them.
The proposal to increase school fees should be subjected to public participation for re-evaluation.
If approved in the current form, it will exert undue pressure on the already overburdened parents and may result in many students being sent away from school due to the inability to pay school fees.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
