The government has so far injected Sh300 billion to finance the free Primary and Secondary Education. Photo/FILE.
According to Cabinet Secretary for Education, Dr. Fred Matiangi the government has so far injected Sh300billion to finance the free Primary and Secondary Education.
“Kenya is the 7th largest country which spends its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education saying this was sufficient to provide an educational ecosystem fit to provide quality education at affordable cost,” the CS said during prize giving day at MaryHill Girls.
He however, regretted that although the country had plenty of resources to finance quality education, it suffered from shortage of honesty and integrity in the management of school finances.
The government has sent millions of shillings to secondary schools under the Free Day Secondary Education programmes, but laments that a number of schools had not attained the desired 1:1 student to book ratio.
“I would rather not be Cabinet Secretary for education instead of presiding over theft of resources,” Matiangi said.
He criticized the public schools’ book harvest programme saying it was an unaccountable method of securing textbooks to schools when the government funds the purchase of textbooks in public primary and secondary schools.
The CS said the government will take full charge of book distribution to ensure that books get into schools and into the hands of learners.
Free Primary Education was started back to 2003 by the former President Kibaki government while the introduction of Free Day Secondary Education in 2008 when the government started paying a subsidy of Sh10,265 for each student a year. The figure was later scaled up a figure of Sh12,870 in 2015.
In June last year, President Uhuru Kenyatta said the government will make secondary school education in public schools in Kenya free starting from 2019.
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