The ministry of Education has been urged to protect schools in Nyanza region from collecting extra levies to fund capacity building of school managements.
Track One Learners Alliance Protection chairman Innocent Masara said that most secondary schools have been forced to pay as much as Sh. 16,000 to fund these programmes.
Masara said that county director of educations always direct schools to pay such amounts in the middle of schools budget cycle.
“As an Alliance, we have raised this issue more than three times and the trend is continuing. We are making a last appeal to the ministry of education to intervene or else we move to court,” he said.
He noted that Principals are forced to slash some of their budgets to fund these impromptu training mostly for Board of Managements and school bursars.
Addressing a press conference in Kisumu, Masara noted that the training is rampant in Kisumu and Siaya Counties and called upon education cabinet secretary Dr. Fred Matiang’i to intervene and address the situation.
“We must protect the poor parents from these extra levies. The point is that it is the parts who will be forced to pay these levies in the school fees to cater for the training,” he said.
However, speaking on phone, Siaya County Director of Education Nereah Olik defended the training noting that training is mandatory.
Mr Olik said the training is done across the country and not a Siaya County issue alone.
“The training is vital for education stakeholders, we moved from Board of Governors to Board of Management and it was necessary to conduct the training. This is not a Siaya issue aloe,” she said.
She noted that the training of the Boards of Managements were done by the Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association and the county ministry education office was only coordinating the facilitators.
“In some instances, school heads flout ideas and as the ministry of education we step in to help them implement,” he said.