The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) has denied claims that it authorized the oversupply of textbooks in public schools across the country.
The institute has attributed the move to the mass transfer of students from one school to the other due to Covid-19 that saw parents lose jobs and relocate to their rural homes.
In the last couple of months, headteachers and leaders have cried foul over the continuous dumping of unwanted books in the schools by printers.
Some schools have been forced to buy plastic water tanks to store the books with their stores already filled up.
But according to KICD Director Professor Charles Omondo, the flooding had affected a few schools after learners were transferred at the height of the pandemic.
“A few schools that were affected by the transfers had problems with the books supply but we are reviewing this problem,” he said.
Omondo at the same time denied that set books were being changed every year noting that KICD had evaluated all the books needed by schools.
“We have given teachers the books that have met the threshold and they are supposed to pick one per subject while the others can be used by the teachers for reference,” he said.
Addressing the press in Central Primary school in Naivasha, the director added that they are visiting schools to ensure grade five pupils have received learning materials.
He said that plans for the transition from 8-4-4 to Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) system were in place with the government moving in to build in more classes.
KICD has further disassociated itself from a long list of books being demanded by some private schools
Earlier, Gilgil Mp Martha Wangari had raised an alert over the possible loss of millions of shillings in procurement of textbooks for public schools.
According to the Mp, schools were oversupplied with hundreds of books that they did not need as part of the capitation fees that went to pay the printers.
“It’s time that we allowed teachers to procure the books that they need and we should put a threshold on the amount used to buy the books,” she said.
She added that tens of schools in the country had been oversupplied with books that they did not require while set books were being changed every year.
“When parliament resumes we shall summon the CS for Education to clarify on this issue where printers are dumping unwanted books in schools,” she said.
Source and Image: https://www.kbc.co.ke/kicd-denies-over-supplying-schools-with-unwanted-text-books/
Education Cabinet Secretary Professor George Magoha has faulted individuals who failed to implement the Government’s laptop project that would have salvaged the current situation.
Magoha who was attending the start of a two-day stakeholders meeting on university reforms challenged institutions of higher learning to invest in online classes and address challenges of funding.
It is at this meeting that the Education CS took a swipe at individuals who he says failed to ensure the implementation of laptops for all school-going children which would have come in handy in ensuring learning continues as the nation battles the pandemic.
At the same time, he challenged universities to invest in virtual learning to ensure learning continues.
Magoha also took issue with what he termed as the flawed funding formula for Universities calling on the stakeholders to deliberate on sustainable financing of the institution as opposed to over-reliance on government financing.
He also called for greater autonomy at universities even as he hailed the move by 70 per cent of universities to adopt key COVID 19 measures as advised by the ministry.
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This comes after two days after the CS announced that 3000 private schools are set to benefit from a Ksh7 billion concessional loan from the government to support infrastructural development in readiness for schools reopening in January.
The loan is to be availed at an interest rate of between 2.5 and 3.5% will support areas like installation of ICT systems to ensure learning continues during the phased reopening of schools.
The loan will also be availed at an interest rate of between 2.5 and 3.5% and will be dependent on the absorption rate of an institution.
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To ensure social distancing during learning, schools will be expected to construct extra classrooms with availed funds.
Schools that will get the money will also be expected procure sanitary and hand-washing stations to ensure the highest levels of hygiene.
With schools expected to reopen in January, the government funds are also expected to cater to ICT infrastructure in readiness for a phased reopening.
Source and Image: https://www.kbc.co.ke/__trashed-14/
Only 38 percent of public and private schools across Japan managed to begin their new academic year this month with students in classrooms in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic, the education ministry said Monday.
But in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka and four other prefectures placed under a state of emergency by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government last week, the proportion was a mere 6 percent, according to data compiled by the ministry as of Friday.
In Japan, a new school term typically begins in early April. Even before requesting people, especially those in the seven prefectures, to stay home as much as possible, Abe asked nationwide elementary, junior and senior high schools to shut for about one month from early March through the end of the spring break.
The data, covering public, state-run and private educational institutions from preschools through high schools, showed that 55 percent of them in the rest of the country’s 40 prefectures started the new term.
But all public and national schools in the seven prefectures remained closed, while 24 percent of private schools including preschools in the areas opened their facilities.
In other regions of Japan, 52 percent of public, 40 percent of national and 75 percent of private schools opened for the new term.
Of 900 universities and vocational colleges responding to the ministry’s survey, also as of Friday, 85.8 percent said they had decided to postpone the start of the new academic year or were still considering whether to change the schedule.
None of the universities and colleges in the seven prefectures said they would be holding classes as usual, while 4 percent in other regions of the country said they would.
As for online classes, 74.4 percent of national universities said they would hold them, compared to 46 percent of private universities and 32.7 percent of vocational colleges.
In a bid to prevent the further spread of the virus, Abe declared a monthlong state of emergency last Tuesday for the seven prefectures with big urban populations, also including Chiba, Hyogo, Kanagawa and Saitama, which have been grappling with a recent spike in the number of new cases.
The declaration, based on a revised law enacted last month, has given the governors of the seven prefectures the power to call for school and some business closures until this year’s Golden Week holidays end on May 6.
Source of the notice: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200414/p2g/00m/0na/012000c
Europe/United Kingdom/02-02-2020/ Author and Source: www.rt.com
Leading private schools in England have criticized plans to improve access to top universities for poorer students, saying it could lead to discrimination of rich kids based on “class,” provoking ridicule on social media.
The Headmasters’ & Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), an association that represents some of the UK’s most expensive private schools, voiced concerns about proposals published on Wednesday by the Office for Students, the higher education regulator for England.
Mike Buchanan, the HMC’s executive director, claimed universities should expand to accommodate as many “truly suitable students” as needed, rather than “rob some students of a future to award it to others.” He argued that institutions must look at their international students intake rather than restrict places to UK students “based on their class.”Plans being put forward by the regulator include a promise to halve the access gap at England’s most selective institutions in the next five years, increasing the amount of disadvantaged students by 6,500 a year from 2024-25.
The seemingly hostile reaction from elite private schools has, perhaps unsurprisingly, prompted much mockery online, with many people expressing little sympathy with their “predicament,” with one person tweeting: “I have a tiny violin. Somewhere.”
Guardian columnist Frances Ryan sarcastically remarked that being discriminated based on class sounded like a “terrible education system,” adding: “We should totally do something to fix that.” Others online mercilessly attacked the premise that the “kids of the rich and greedy” deserve sympathy because they’re being attacked based on their “accident-of-birth privilege.”
Some accused the private schools of being “actual Marvel villains,” while another Twitter user claimed the “lack of self-awareness is astounding.”
Kalwant Bhopal, a professor of education and justice at Birmingham University, said that it was clear that young people going to independent fee-paying schools were “more likely to be middle-class,” adding that “these schools continue to perpetuate privilege.”
Fuente e Imagen: https://www.rt.com/uk/479471-private-schools-poor-students-universities/
The United Kingdom’s Labour Party has recently made a landmark decision to, if it were to form government, pass legislation that would effectively spell the end of private schools.
In a move the party says would abolish the “privilege of a tiny elite”, private school systems would be dismantled and navigated into the public sector.
The finer details of exactly how this would happen are still being developed.
In the interim, the proposal has raised questions about the necessity of splitting education into private and public streams, going forward.
The New Daily asked Southern Cross University School of Education associate professor (adjunct) Dr David Zyngier for his assessment on how a similar plan could or couldn’t work in Australia.
Nationalise our private schools?
In terms of setting a precedent, how influential is UK Labour’s decision to effectively scrap private schools?
The UK Labour Party has decided if elected to scrap elitist private schools which are confusing called “public schools” in the UK. In the UK these private schools are not publicly funded but have tax deductible status. UK Labour endorsed plans that would abolish private schools by removing their charitable status and redistributing their endowments, investments and properties to the state sector.
Southern Cross University’s Dr David Zyngier. Photo: Supplied
Basically, a nationalisation process, it represents an existential threat to their dominance of the most influential roles in the British establishment. The policy added universities would be limited to admitting the same proportion of private school students as in the wider population, currently 7 per cent. The chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, which represents about 1000 private schools in England, said Labour’s vote was an attack on the rights of parents.
How is the education environment different in the UK to Australia?
In the UK private schools are not directly publicly funded but have tax deductible status. In Australia these schools have DRG status as well as being partially to almost wholly funded through public subsidy by both states and federal governments. British private schools (known as public schools) don’t get any government funding but rely totally on fees raised from parents and donors. They are private businesses, run for profit.
This was also the situation in Australia prior to 1963 with the beginning of what has been termed State Aid to Catholic schools to bring their facilities in their “systemic” or parish schools up to a respectable standard with science facilities and at the same time began the long-term process of providing federal benefits to elitist private schools. At that time some 25 per cent of students were enrolled in private schools in Australia and in 1965 these schools received 25 per cent of all Commonwealth funding. Today private schools receive 75 per cent of all federal funding.
The recent OECD Education at a Glance 2019 shows that Australia is the fourth most privatised country. Whereas countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland, Luxembourg spend almost no private money on school education Australia ranks fourth-last in the most privatised school education spending in the OECD before Mexico, Columbia, Turkey, with 35 per cent of students attending private schools whereas it is only 7 per cent in the UK.
In the UK most faith-based schools are part of the public system, as they are in most European countries and Canada. Religious schools (Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh) are public schools and fully funded by the public and do not charge additional parental fees.
In Australia private schools on average receive about $10,000 per student from combined government funding on top of the parental fees which can be as much as $35,000 per student (non-boarding).
According to research by former Productivity Commissioner Trevor Cobbold real funding (adjusted for inflation) for public schools between 2009-2017 was cut by $17 per student (-0.2%) while funding for Catholic schools increased by $1420 per student (18.4%) and $1318 (20.9%) for so-called independent schools per student.
Total real income per public student over that time period fell by $58 (-0.5) but increased by $1888 (17.8%) in Catholic schools and by $2306 (15.1%) in independent schools per student.
It is claimed by conservative commentators that private schools are more efficient in their use of money. Last year 2,558,169 (65%) Australian students attended public primary and secondary schools. Combined government recurrent (non-capital) expenditure averaged $17,531 per student across all states and territories.
In the Catholic and Independent schools this figure was $19,302 including $10,664 of public funding per student, the rest being made up of parent fees. Given recent research finds that public schools (excluding select entry schools) equal or outperform private schools when socio-economic status is considered one must ask why does it take so much extra money to educate private school students? Perhaps it is because the decline in Australia’s performance in international tests over the decade is primarily due to falling results in private schools, the falls being similar in both Independent and Catholic schools.
Can you ever see something similar happening in Australia? Would it be a positive or negative change for the country’s education system?
Study after study indicate that money does really matter in education in disadvantaged communities but not in wealthier ones. Unfortunately, in Australia it seems that most of the additional government spend on education flows to private schools that don’t need this additional money. Any private school that charges fees over the agreed Schooling Resource Standard($11,343 for primary and $14,254 for secondary students in 2019)should immediately lose all publicfunding.
Elitist schools across Australia charging more than $20,000 in fees do not need public money. They will not lose too many students if they need to raise their fees even higher. If private schools cannot meet their recurrent costs, they could voluntarily become public schools opening enrolment to all students in their local area.
Schools charging less than the resource standard should have their public funding reduced gradually by 10 per cent per annum until it is zero. Again, if these schools cannot meet their financial obligations they could be taken over by the state and become as in the UK and elsewhere state-run faith-based schools but still open to all children in their local area. This would be an actual saving of money over time.
What can Australia take away from this plan?
Given the $14 billion the public subsidised Catholic and Independent schools in Australia in 2018, should some private and Catholic schools start to close if their subsidies were removed so that some 5 to 10 per cent of their students were to enrol in public schools there would be no problem integrating all these kids into an equitable multicultural diverse public education system. We would then return to the same situation before the “school choice” phenomenon.
Source of the notice: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/10/05/what-australia-can-learn-from-the-uks-bold-call-to-end-private-schools/
These schools are core to Britain’s inequality problem. Labour should emulate Finland and integrate them into state education
As a teacher of ethics, philosophy and religion at a Manchester comprehensive school, students often ask me why politicians allow 7% of children in this country to access exclusive schools that enable them to dominate the top professions – schools whose main entrance criteria is the size of parents’ bank accounts. These days, I usually answer, “because the politicians are wrong”.
I sometimes inform my students of the latest Sutton Trust reports which highlight that 65% of senior judges, 49% of armed forces officers, 44% of newspaper columnists and 29% of MPs are all privately educated. Being a good teacher, I integrate maths into my subject and get them to work out the extent to which private school students are disproportionately represented in these professions. You should see the disheartened looks on their faces.
I tell them not to lose hope and that there is something called “social mobility”, which means that if they work really hard, get to university and then work hard in their careers they might be lucky enough to get one of those remaining top jobs that haven’t gone to the privately educated. They don’t look convinced. The Social Mobility Commission wasn’t convinced back in 2017 either, which is why its commissioners resigned en masse a year and a half ago.
I’d hoped under Jeremy Corbyn that my party would have been up for finishing off what Clement Attlee failed to do after the second world war: phase out private schools. There was a welcome commitment in Labour’s last manifesto to add VAT to private school fees, but the impact of this will be minimal and certainly won’t hasten the demise of private schools.
Labour’s pledge to create a National Education Service is exciting. The party has published a National Education Service charter that commits it to “tackling structural, cultural and individual barriers which cause and perpetuate inequality”. Earlier this year, Corbyn quite rightly pledged to focus on promoting social justice rather than social mobility, but I was bemused by the silence on private schools. How, precisely, does one tackle structural inequalities in England without phasing out private schools? Are we serious about these inequalities or just tinkering?
In the past Labour has missed opportunities to integrate private schools into the state sector – we can’t let that happen again. That’s why we have launched the Labour Against Private Schools campaign. Our first goal is to make the full integration of private schools into the state education system official party policy, by getting a motion passed in support of this at Labour’s annual conference this September.
There are models of excellent education systems that exist without private schools. Finland is often held up as a system that consistently achieves some of the best educational outcomes across Europe and the OECD countries. In Finland, private schools were effectively brought into the comprehensive education system over the course of a decade. It is time England started to seriously plan a school system without private schools, so that in the future teachers like me can look their students in the eye and tell them that this country has removed one of the biggest barriers that the richest people erected to unfairly advantage their progeny.
So I am proud to tell my students that I am a founding member of the Labour Against Private Schools campaign, and that I will do everything I can to encourage the Labour leadership to commit to dismantling the private schools sector that continues to uphold gross levels of inequality in this country.
Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/09/labour-phase-out-private-schools-britain-inequality-finland
These schools are core to Britain’s inequality problem. Labour should emulate Finland and integrate them into state education
As a teacher of ethics, philosophy and religion at a Manchester comprehensive school, students often ask me why politicians allow 7% of children in this country to access exclusive schools that enable them to dominate the top professions – schools whose main entrance criteria is the size of parents’ bank accounts. These days, I usually answer, “because the politicians are wrong”.
I sometimes inform my students of the latest Sutton Trust reports which highlight that 65% of senior judges, 49% of armed forces officers, 44% of newspaper columnists and 29% of MPs are all privately educated. Being a good teacher, I integrate maths into my subject and get them to work out the extent to which private school students are disproportionately represented in these professions. You should see the disheartened looks on their faces.
I tell them not to lose hope and that there is something called “social mobility”, which means that if they work really hard, get to university and then work hard in their careers they might be lucky enough to get one of those remaining top jobs that haven’t gone to the privately educated. They don’t look convinced. The Social Mobility Commission wasn’t convinced back in 2017 either, which is why its commissioners resigned en masse a year and a half ago.
I’d hoped under Jeremy Corbyn that my party would have been up for finishing off what Clement Attlee failed to do after the second world war: phase out private schools. There was a welcome commitment in Labour’s last manifesto to add VAT to private school fees, but the impact of this will be minimal and certainly won’t hasten the demise of private schools.
Labour’s pledge to create a National Education Service is exciting. The party has published a National Education Service charter that commits it to “tackling structural, cultural and individual barriers which cause and perpetuate inequality”. Earlier this year, Corbyn quite rightly pledged to focus on promoting social justice rather than social mobility, but I was bemused by the silence on private schools. How, precisely, does one tackle structural inequalities in England without phasing out private schools? Are we serious about these inequalities or just tinkering?
In the past Labour has missed opportunities to integrate private schools into the state sector – we can’t let that happen again. That’s why we have launched the Labour Against Private Schools campaign. Our first goal is to make the full integration of private schools into the state education system official party policy, by getting a motion passed in support of this at Labour’s annual conference this September.
There are models of excellent education systems that exist without private schools. Finland is often held up as a system that consistently achieves some of the best educational outcomes across Europe and the OECD countries. In Finland, private schools were effectively brought into the comprehensive education system over the course of a decade. It is time England started to seriously plan a school system without private schools, so that in the future teachers like me can look their students in the eye and tell them that this country has removed one of the biggest barriers that the richest people erected to unfairly advantage their progeny.
So I am proud to tell my students that I am a founding member of the Labour Against Private Schools campaign, and that I will do everything I can to encourage the Labour leadership to commit to dismantling the private schools sector that continues to uphold gross levels of inequality in this country.
Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/09/labour-phase-out-private-schools-britain-inequality-finland
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