Over the past few weeks, campaigns for the 2012/13 General Elections have intensified with each Presidential hopeful promising Kenyans a bagful of goodies.
During the political campaigns, virtually all the presidential hopefuls have promised to focus on the issues that are facing the youth and disenfranchising them. That’s just a political undertone implying that they consider the youth to be their key selling point, i.e they plan to thrive on the youth’s desperation. This is so putting in mind that “issues” is just a blanket word that does not pinpoint the crux of the matter!
Former news editor and now celebrated actor, Oliver Litondo while receiving the best actor award for the movie First Grader during the 11th Annual Movie for Grownups awards in Hollywood called on movie producers to come shoot movies in Kenya noting that the country has numerous “EDUCATED BUT UNEMPLOYED YOUTH”.
If the presidential hopefuls want us to buy their promises to transform Kenya, they should let us know how they are going to address this concern raised by Litondo should they be elected to office. Education is the key and whatever predicaments the youth in Kenya are in, is either due to poor education or total lack of it!
Most of the youth who engage in crime or join outlawed gangs are mostly drop outs. They seek security in numbers because in those numbers, they find similar things to groan and mourn about, similar people to blame (politicians) and whenever the law catches up with them, it is the same gang that bails them out!
This is despite the fact that after his election in 2002, Mwai Kibaki made basic primary education free. Even after extending the same to secondary education after his controversial election in 2007, Kibaki’s Government failed to address the quality of education, instead thriving on political satisfaction that there was a mass getting educated! It’s the same mass that metamorphoses to a gang after realizing the substandard education they acquire cannot earn them a job in a highly competitive job market.
Thus, the biggest gift Kenyans can get from a new Government is a completely overhauled education system devoid of donor funding which creates loopholes for grand theft like it happened in the infamous Free Primary Education funds fleecing. And what better way to address this than to encourage the privatization of learning institutions?
Although it may sound as a far fetched idea, it has massive long-term gains. Privatizing learning institutions would not only see the quality of education improve but would generally see the living conditions of one of the most hardworking group of workers, teachers, improved!
By encouraging investors to invest in schools, the Government would reduce the state spending in funding public education, a move that would completely seal off any avenues of education funds looting.
Investors, driven by competition would offer quality education and the best ‘prices’ and although privatizing would seem expensive for the average parent, this cut throat competition would ensure that prices ultimately come down.
The best scenario to explain the long term benefits of encouraging investors to invest in education is the growth of the mobile phone industry. In 2000, during the onset of the mobile phone industry in the country, the two carriers by then, Kencell and Safaricom, charged calls made through their networks at an average of Ksh 48 per minute in a per minute billing system. 11 years down the line, there are a total of four carriers and the calls have gone down to as low as Ksh. 1 per minute in a per second billing!
Public schools are poorly managed and too big, and in privatization, there should be a provision for parents to be able to choose schools that will be smaller and more responsive to children's needs.
A new market would inject new energy in a sluggish education system and with the improved ICT in the country, private schools would be able to give pupils an opportunity to follow personalized courses via the school intranet!
And privatization does not necessarily mean that all public schools will disappear from the landscape in the near or even long range; it is more of a situation where the public school system shrinks and transforms into something very different.
India, which has the biggest number of privatized schools has encouraged privatization informed by the fact that most public university graduates are not work-ready. Most public education institutions do not offer vocational training and as one education expert noted, most graduates, after finishing school are like a computer with an old operating system: they need an upgrade to keep up with the times!
