The government has promised Kenyans that the education sector will improve.
President William Ruto has indicated that he has used the last four months of his presidency to build the framework for a revolution in the education sector.
Ruto promised to eliminate HELB and TVET funding and establish a national skills and funding council to connect the two levels in order to provide a credit transfer framework and facilitate academic development.
To pay non-tuition costs, the National Education Fund will seek grants, bursaries, and scholarships from private and public donors.
“To bridge the current higher education funding gap of up to 45 per cent, the government will establish the National Skill and Funding Council that amalgamates Helb, TVET, and University Funding Board.
“This immediately doubles the current Higher Education Loans Board funding from Sh11 billion to Sh22 billion and eliminates interest on Helb loans.”
During a New Year’s Eve celebration at State House in Mombasa, Ruto stated that the government intends to invest more money in the sector to revitalize it.
He stated that 30,000 more basic education teachers, as well as 3,000 TVET tutors, will be engaged this year to enable a smooth transition into the first junior secondary school level.
“We intend to use our education system to develop world-class human capital. This is why, in January, we set out to hire more teachers to ensure that our primary to junior secondary transition is flawless,” President Ruto said.
Ruto stated that the government will hire a fraction of the projected 58,000 teachers per year for Sh25 billion over the next two years to solve the sector’s existing shortage of 116,000.
“We promise to ensure government-initiated in-service training, including teacher continuing professional development,” he stated.
Ruto also stated that the government wants to spend Sh15 billion to equip 70 TVET colleges to aid in the training of learners and prepare them for the labor market.
The Kenya Kwanza Alliance also vowed in its Education Charter to finish the development of vocational training centers in each ward as well as to ensure that every constituency has a Technical and Vocational Educational Training Institution (TVET).
“Within the first two years, we will establish and fully equip a Tvet institution in each of the remaining 52 constituencies,” the charter states.
“We will also hire tutors to look after our TVET institutions, because TVET has the best human capital that is tailored towards Science, Technical, Engineering, and Mathematics (Stem) subjects and areas that will lead us to engineering, because that is the future we seek.”
Ruto said the recommendations of the Presidential Working Party will inform the government on how to streamline human capital and sharpen and solve challenges in the education sector.
“We know many universities are facing numerous challenges and significant debts as a result of the programme’s length. We will focus on ensuring our universities receive adequate attention to provide quality education.”
He also proposed establishing a public university and increasing the number of technical universities from three to eight across the eight regions from the current three.
Universities will be forced to focus on their comparative advantage in education.
“For example, the universities in Mombasa should have courses that focus on the blue economy while those in Turkana will focus on mining.”
