Schools take tough measures after riots

Tough conditions have been imposed on students seeking re-admission in schools affected by the recent wave of strikes.

Parents will have to pay between Sh2,000 and Sh6,500 per student to cover for the damage caused when students burnt dormitories and destroyed other school property during the protests that rocked more than 300 schools countrywide.

Some 700 students of Mwasere Girls Secondary School in Taita District will each pay Sh6,500 for the reconstruction of a dormitory burnt during the protests. In some institutions, students in boarding schools will be made day scholars.

In other schools they will have to sign declarations that they will not take prohibited items to school. Personal interviews will be conducted to establish who led the arson attacks in which schools lost millions of shillings in properties.

Transfers frozen

The Ministry of Education has already declared that students who led the arson attacks would not be re-admitted. It has also stopped the transfer of students for one year.

Among the other conditions that students and their parents must fulfil before readmission include:

• Paying damage fees for schools where buildings and property were destroyed.
• Form Four candidates involved in violent protests against mock examinations be suspended until the KCSE exam.
• Students sit mock exams as they commute from home.
• Clearance after police investigations into the cause of the mayhem.
• Expulsion of those involved in the attacks.
• Students to identify those who might have committed arson.

While some of the students face prosecution, parents will also bear the burden for the extensive damage to school buildings and property.

However, many parents have protested at the directive requiring them to pay for repairs.

On Wednesday, parents at Dagoretti High School said the amount needed for repairing classrooms and doors had been increased to Sh3,500 from the Sh2,000 agreed on during an earlier meeting between them and the school administration. The school is set to re-open later in the week.

Prompt parents

The decision that parents will bear the full cost of rebuilding schools burnt down during strikes was first made by President Kibaki during a meeting in Nyeri at the weekend.

Later, the senior deputy Director of Education in charge of secondary education, Ms Concilia Ondiek, said money from the Constituency Development Fund and other devolved funds would not be used to rebuild the destroyed facilities.

This, she said, would prompt parents to take charge of their children’s discipline.

The Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association chairman, Mr Cleophas Tirop, has since supported the directive saying parents should shoulder the cost of repairing burnt schools.

Mr Tirop, who is the Kapsabet Boys High School principal, said that as a rule, parents meet the cost of damage caused by students. “We cannot pass the cost to the Government while the students caused the problem,” he said.

Most headteachers the Nation spoke to supported the directive, saying it served parents right because they had abdicated the role of disciplining their children.

This week, parents, teachers and other players in education, have been meeting to find the solutions to strikes in schools.

In Nyeri, students dominated hearings by a parliamentary committee on the wave of violence in schools.

They cited an overloaded curriculum, poor communication with their teachers, lack of basic facilities and indiscipline as some of the causes for the unrest. Students who made presentations opposed the re-introduction of corporal punishment.

In Nairobi, students from Sunshine Secondary School said they were aggrieved by the administration’s decision to suspend boarding facilities for Form Fours as they did their mocks.

Students from Upper Hill Secondary School have not yet been recalled after they burnt a dormitory. One student died in the blaze. Only those in Form Four had resumed to sit their mock examinations.

Parents, staff and students of St George’s Secondary met on Wednesday to discuss the re-opening of the school which had been closed to forestall a strike.

At Queen of Apostles Seminary, where students defied the advice of John Cardinal Njue and set fire to a dormitory hours after the Nairobi archbishop left, the rector, Fr John Muhindi, said that while the school was bound to act by the Government’s rules on students who planned and executed the strikes, it was upon the administration to decide what to do with boys.

Mobile phones

The school was still investigating the incident and had identified at least 15 students who might have been involved.

Fr Muhindi said communication using mobile phones and some students who had sought permission to be out of school before the fire occurred might have contributed to the burning of the dormitory.

Parents will pay for its repair but the school would chip in if required to.

At Kahawa Secondary School, also in Nairobi, students have been ordered to pay for damages. The school was closed last week after violent protests.

The headmaster, Mr Peter Kiragu, said students from other forms had resumed school and were sitting the end of term examinations this week.

The headteacher said those involved in the strike would be suspended up to the time of the KCSE examination and would then only be allowed in the school to sit their papers. He put the damage caused at the school at Sh100,000.

At Aquinas Secondary School, the 800 parents will pay Sh2,000 each for a dormitory that was razed last week.

The deputy principal, Mr Charles Ng’ang’a, said parents had agreed to pay the amount at a meeting at the school last week.

End of term exam

Mr Ng’ang’a said the damaged dormitory would cost Sh1.67 million to repair. According to him, most of the students were angry with their colleagues for the incident which had spoilt the school’s reputation.

The school will reopen in August so that students in lower forms can sit their end of term examinations and the Form Fours the mock examination.

When the Nation visited the school on Wednesday, screening was going on to identify the students who might had been involved in the incident.

At Royal Star Academy in Ongata Rongai, a meeting between the parents and the school’s director, Mr Moses Ochieng, will determine who will foot the bill for the reconstruction of a dormitory worth Sh3.4 million.

Mr Ochieng said he had put the school’s programme first and only two of the students involved in the arson attack were still missing.

Ngara Girls and Pumwani Secondary, which were also closed last week, are awaiting instructions from the Provincial Director of Education.