Nairobi Senator Mike Mbuvi Sonko (right) with Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi at a fundraiser to support the constituency’s bursary kitty in Eldoret last year. Photo/FILE
What you need to know:
Task force proposes cash for needy students be sent to secondary school heads.
The move will limit the role of politicians, especially MPs, who are patrons of the Constituency Bursary Committee (CBC), in the selection of the fund’s beneficiaries.
The team is expected to hand in the final report in July with the finer details of how the bursary cash would reach the schools.
MPs will lose control of the Sh1.1 billion Constituency Bursary Fund to headteachers if recommendations of a task force on secondary school fees are adopted.
The task force chaired by former Education assistant minister Kilemi Mwiria said that the Treasury should send the cash to schools the same way free secondary and primary education cash is disbursed.
The move will limit the role of politicians, especially MPs, who are patrons of the Constituency Bursary Committee (CBC), in the selection of the fund’s beneficiaries.
“Constituency bursary funds should be disbursed to schools just like Free Day Secondary Education schedules since schools are in a better position to identify needy students,” reads the preliminary report of task force.
The team is expected to hand in the final report in July with the finer details of how the bursary cash would reach the schools.
The allocation to each constituency is based on secondary school enrolment and its poverty index relative to the overall national admission.
Currently, some undeserving students have been offered bursaries with needy students allocated as a little as Sh2,000 in the quest by the local leaders to spread the cash to as many households as possible.
The regulation caps the minimum allocation to students in day schools at Sh8,000 while those in boarding and national institutions at Sh10,000 and Sh15,000 respectively.
MPs and ward representatives, who act as members of CBC, have been blamed for unfairly influencing allocations to undeserving students.
The bursary cash together with the Constituency Development Fund have recently been turned into a campaign tool for local politicians.
The fund was established in 1993 as Secondary School Education Bursary Fund (SEBF), under former President Moi’s regime, to cushion the poor and vulnerable families from the rising cost of secondary education and boost transition from primary school.
The SEBF was converted to the Constituency Bursary Fund in 2003 to ensure that bright and needy students are identified and helped through a process that involves local leaders.
The new proposal, if adopted, will limit the role of politicians in the management of the bursary fund.
Besides the MPs and ward representatives, the other CBS members include local teachers’ union representatives, area education officer, two chairpersons of Parents Teachers Association and a schools management committee chairpersons.
Allocation to the bursary fund, which is shared by 290 constituencies, has more than doubled from Sh500 million in the year to June 2012 to Sh1.17 billion in the current financial year.
Five per cent of the entire fund is set aside for female students in the spirit of promoting gender equality, which is a constitutional requirement.
The recommendations of the task force will guide the Ministry of Education on setting the optimum secondary school fees amid concerns that the current rates are locking the poor out of post-primary education.
A number of bright students who secured Form One admission to elite national schools this year opted to join low-ranked county and district schools because their parents could not raise annual fees running to as much as Sh130,000.
The Kenya National Association of Parents said that the national schools had increased fees by about 100 per cent in the recent past in breach of the ministry’s regulations, prompting the formation of the task force.
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