Push for Boarding School Ban Gains Momentum After Endarasha Tragedy.
Dagoreti North MP Beatrice Elachi recommended on Monday the abolition of primary boarding schools in the country to prevent catastrophes like the one at Hillside Endarasha Academy, sparking a debate about whether boarding schools should be abolished.
‘’No primary school should be a boarding institution. Let parents take care of their children till they reach high school,’’ Elachi stated.
The lawmaker argued that the ages of the children who died at Endarasha Academy were too young to flee the catastrophe, pointing to a gap that was likely overlooked in terms of immediate treatment for the children.
The lawmaker also urged parents to accept responsibility and avoid shying away from the task of caring for their children.
Elachi commented that students at Endarasha Academy were unable to care for themselves, implying that parents and instructors had a role to play in avoiding the disaster.
‘’Did they have a matron? Boys need a lot of support, and they needed to have someone looking after them,” she added.
The MP related the recent occurrence to possible psychological gaps, claiming that many school-aged children, particularly boys, keep concerns to themselves.
Elachi speculated that the children may have suffocated on the smoke that filled the dormitory and urged parents to keep a watchful eye on their children, noting that boys need more support than girls.
‘’Boys keep many things to themselves as opposed to girls, and that is why it was wrong to have them on their own. They needed someone to be with them at the dormitories,’’ she added.
There have been calls to abolish boarding schools in the country, but the Ministry of Education backed down on the ideas in 2023, citing the importance of the schools, particularly for parents in nomadic areas.
Boarding schools had outlived their purpose
The plan to abolish boarding schools aligns with the ideas of former Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary General, Mr. Wilson Sossion, who advocated for its removal in Kenya (Siele, 2020). Sossion authored an opinion post in 2020,
He claimed that boarding schools had outlived their purpose and that it was time for reform.
Kenya’s education system should be totally based on day schools and accessible at the local level. This
The recommendation extended not only to the secondary level, but also to kindergarten through grade twelve. His perspective is an intriguing development in the history of educational reform, but it is not new. The Koech Commission of 1999 (GOK, 1999) emphasized the need to make secondary education more accessible.
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By establishing and expanding more day schools. The rationale behind this was to reduce expenditures, hence increasing access to secondary education. The fact is that many developed countries, like Britain, which launched (boarding) schools in Kenya, have completely accepted the day.
Secondary (junior and senior) education is mostly delivered through the school system.
Both the 2020 Taskforce and Sossion agree that it’s time to run public schools from early childhood to grade 12 that are located locally and together. It’s doable. Indeed, in numerous regions, every other primary school has a nearby high school. Additionally, practically all highly regarded institutions.
Push for Boarding School Ban Gains Momentum After Endarasha Tragedy.
