The parliamentary committee on education has supported a directive by the Jubilee coalition leaders that public schools release students’ certificates withheld due to school fees arrears.
The committee’s vice chair, Julius Melly, said it was unlawful for schools to detain students’ certificates as it curtails their dreams.
“There is no merit for school heads to retain Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education certificates for students who are unable to clear school fees. This propels their plight and condemns them to poverty,” Melly said.
He also pointed the need to have a sober approach of the matter, calling on leaders to shun politicising the issue because it concerns the lives and future of innocent students.
“The executive, teachers, and other education stakeholders should seat on a roundtable and negotiate the modalities for the payments of the school arrears but it should not be used as blackmail for not releasing the certificates,” Melly added.
Melly was speaking at Egerton University during the education parliamentary committee tour on a fact-finding mission of the stalled projects at the university.
The directive has raised eyebrows from teachers, who are pointing hard times ahead if the directive is implemented without payment, saying it will make other students not to pay fees, hence crippling school operations.