Amukura Catholic Parish Priest Fr Dunstan Epalat offers prayers to James Anyango (left) and his family before blessing his new house in Apokor village in Teso South on Friday.A Busia Catholic priest has appealed to Education Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiang'i to consider lowering university and tertiary colleges’ entry points to accommodate students who failed to attain the current minimum entry requirements.
Speaking after blessing the new palatial home of Busia County ODM youth league chairman James Anyango at Apokor Village in Teso South Sub County on Friday, Fr Dunstan Epalat said it will be fair that special consideration be made to enable more students join institutions of higher learning.
"The students with minimum marks outside of the C+ require that something is done so that more students can go to university. The same should be done to diploma and certificate courses,” he said.
“As I speak the results for Busia County are a sad situation and most schools are total failures except for Nangina, Butula and Sigalame. Professionally it is not right, I don't know what the Government is going to do so that hundreds and thousands of students in this nation are thrown out of the system as failures," he said.
Fr Epalat also thanked Education Cabinet Secretary Dr Fredric Matiang'i for clamping on exams cheats.
He said by streamlining the education sector, Matiang'i has made the child who sits for national exams get his or her worth and will discharge their duties in areas they have comparative advantage.
"Getting shortcuts to success is not good. If we get fake people working in areas which need professionalism, they will not offer their best owing to malpractices in acquisition of their degrees," he said and likened the use of shortcuts to acquire degrees to corruption which is rampant in the police force.
Fr Epalat regretted that majority of the children who sat this year's KCSE exams failed. He blamed KNEC over its failure to rationalize the exams to ensure fairness while releasing the results.
"I was a lecturer for 14 years. If the performance is not good in a subject, the pass mark is lowered for a student to acquire "fair mark",” he said.
Secondary Principal Titus Isogol said the KCSE results in Busia County were pathetic.
"We must have an educational forum and ask ourselves when this dirty rain started beating us. There are many Ds and Es. We have no As and less than seven A minuses," he said.
Those who attended the house warming ceremony included County Executive Committee Member for Agriculture Dr Moses Osia, County Chief Officer for Education Joel Barua, former Deputy Speaker Moses Ote and former MCAs Ishmael Orodi, Patrick Ombo, Maurice Chetambe and Ichasi Imwene.