Tana River County Director of Education Khalif Sheikh Issack has cautioned schools principals against sending students home for lack of school fees, but instead collaborate with parents on how the fees will be paid to avoid absenteeism.
Speaking to the press at Hola Teachers’ Advisory Centre Monday, Issack said sending students home will make them lag behind in classroom work, thus leading into poor performance in national examinations.
He noted that in many national schools’ countrywide students are not sent home due to lack of school fees, which is the major reason the schools are doing better in national examinations.
However, the Director said “our Ten Frontier Counties including Tana River, Garissa, Mandera, Wajir, Isiolo, Marsabit, Turkana and Samburu among others perform poorly in national examinations because students spend most of their time at home due to lack of fees, instead of being in classrooms”.
He explained that the habit should be avoided in order to ensure performance in national examinations is improved in Tana River County.
Issack also appealed to parents in the Tana North Sub-county to take their school children to Nangh lower cost secondary because the school is well staffed with eight teachers, but the school lack enough students, citing Form three class that has only three students.
He further said, Bura Constituency Development Fund is currently constructing a dormitory at a cost of Sh5million so that the school could fully become a boarding secondary school.
The Director also appealed to parents to make sure that the 47000 school children captured in the 2019 Census that have dropped out of school are taken back to school immediately.
He said he will involve national government administrators to round up the parents who will not be ready to take their children to school.
By Simon Guruba
