To cure congestion, bring back school building funds

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

07 April 2019

Many of our schools, especially national and county secondary schools, are severely over crowded. Some that were designed for 500 pupils are now hosting up to 1,000. The government’s noble 100-per-cent-transition policy has exacerbated the problem.

How did we get to this state of affairs? I think the greatest contributor was the abolition of school building funds. Understandably, this money was routinely abused by school administrators but, instead of streamlining its collection and utilisation, the government chose the easy way of solving that problem: simply banning the fund.

Interestingly, the school development fund still remains as one of the line items in the school fees guidelines published by the Ministry of Education. However, this vote head is always allocated zero shillings. For that reason, schools cannot collect the money on a regular basis; neither do they get an allocation from the government.

It has therefore become very difficult for school administrators to invest in infrastructure development. Government financing comes in an ad hoc, case-by-case manner. Money to build classrooms is only allocated to those schools that are facing serious problems.

For example; in 2017 when the 100-per-cent-transition policy was mooted, the government allocate some Sh1.5 million each to certain schools that we deemed to be severely crowded so that they could build one additional classroom in readiness for the January 2018 intake.

This way of building school infrastructure is clearly not sustainable. The institutions need a continuous stream of finance in order to keep up with growing numbers of pupils. The question then is: how much is needed and where will the money come from?

I think the Sh1.5M figure allocated to the selected schools in 2017 is a good guide; now we only need to figure out a way of raising the money.

Despite all the good statements made by the leadership, I am not convinced that education is NOT a government priority! Indeed, it is not even one of the so-called “Big Four” sectors that are the focus of development in this election term (2017 - 2021).

Consequently, the only way to finance school development continuously is by re-introducing the collection of school building funds. In fact, the Basic Education Act of 2013 recognises this.

Section 2[6] of the Third Schedule, the Act states: “The functions of the Parents Association shall be to… (c) discuss, explore and advise the parents on ways to raise funds for the physical development and maintenance… (e) discuss and recommend charges to be levied on pupils or parents… (f) undertake and oversee development projects…”

How much should parents pay? A typical school with, say, 500 pupils can raise the Sh1.5M very easily in one year. A contribution of Sh1,500 per child per year is enough. This works down to just Sh500 per term.

This money should be kept in a separate bank account and only used for construction of classrooms and no other purpose. This way, the school can build one new classroom annually and, in five years, the problem of congested classrooms is solved!