Second term fees must be scrapped
IREAD with great excitement about measures put in place by government to help learners as they re-open school.
Primary and Secondary Education minister Cain Mathema was spot on by scrapping second term school fees and no one in their logical sense would want to charge school fees for second term when the learners were home.
The question that parents want answered is how much of the third term school fees must be charged to parents since learners will be at school for less than the normal 92 days term.
This is relevant to the examination candidates and those that start school on November 9.
Secondly, for the urban areas crash programmes including weekend lessons can happen because the parents can afford paying for extra lessons. The rural learners are at a disadvantage, they cannot afford paying for additional lessons, they are poor and very incapacitated. What enforcements measures will be used by the ministry to make sure that the rural learner is not prejudiced?
In my last articles, I spoke about the teachers being the primary source of learning materials, since there are no textbooks in the rural community. And if this source of learning, the teachers, is pressurised to work Monday to Saturday, do they not get exhausted? What incentives come with extra lessons?
It’s a whole lot of a matrix that Mathema must thoroughly consider before embarking on things that are not practically possible. The learners in a normal year attend lessons for a possible 276 days.
This year they have learnt less than 73 days in the first term and a possible 52 days as schools reopen to make it 125 days in a year (about 45%).
Next year the learners start by completing the previous level or grade’s syllabi and then learn for less than 184 days before examinations start. What a hurdle?