As Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan once said, education is the premise of progress in every society. The Kenyan Government seems to have engaged a higher gear towards making this premise a reality and its most recent initiatives on more affordable education in 2018 deserves being lauded.
Over the last five years, the Kenyan Government has arguably implemented significant reforms that include the waiver of examination fees for all learners in primary and secondary schools, enhanced capitation for secondary and primary learners in public schools and integration of ICT in teaching and learning for instance the Digital Literacy Programme and Computers for secondary schools.
Recently, the Government flagged-off the provision of core course books, marking the start of an exercise that will ensure a 1: 1 text book ratio. President Uhuru Kenyatta, while spearheading this exercise noted that this initiative, while costing the Government ksh 7.5 billion, has realized a saving of 13.82 billion shillings.
“Here at Optiven Foundation, an offshoot of Optiven Group, we are extremely pleased with this progress since it is now much more feasiblefor us to supporteven more Kenyan children, given that the cost per student has drastically come down from as high as Kshs75, 000 to less that Kshs27, 000 per term,” says Optiven Foundation’s Chairman and Trustee, Mr. George Wachiuri.
We expect more savings for Kenyans parents and the Foundation as we continue to witness the fruition of these current Government initiatives. We applaud a more concerted investment in education by the Kenyan Government and look forward to see higher allocations during the next Financial Year, probably even double of the Ksh 6.6 billion spend in the previous financial year, towards school infrastructure expansion and improvement
Indeed, the year 2018 is the year of smiles as education is set to become more affordable to most children in Kenya.
