Last word
On Academic
Quagmires
Ochieng was talking to his nephew, his younger brother’ s son, who had been accepted to a school in Meru for high school even though the school was none of those he had indicated as his preference even though he had passed with straight As.
Apparently, the school was a national school and therefore some obscure bureaucrat in the education sector had deemed it fit to post bright students at random around the country with scant regard how disorienting such a practice was.
The conversation was more of an interrogation since Ochieng knew that his nephew hated the school and since he had arrived soon after resuming, claiming that they had been sent home because his father had not paid a development levy that the school was demanding.
Since it was a logistical nightmare for the nephew to get to school from his father’ s house in Siaya, Ochieng had asked his brother to let his nephew break the journey in Nairobi to and from school mainly to allow Ochieng keep a tab on the nephew he rather liked.
Ochieng was now reading a letter to parents that indicated that following a meeting held the previous term, the school administration had indicated that the school had accumulated huge debts arising from non-payments to the school suppliers.
The headmaster had cautioned that if the parents did not bail out the school, then he would have no option but to close the school the following term as the school would not be able to get supplies as suppliers were unwilling to wait further for overdue payments.
The reason for the escalating debt was caused by the delay in government capitation to schools that was now running one year in arrears because the government was supposedly broke and they had prohibited schools from raising school fees.
In the meeting, the parents had been informed that each parent would have to pay thirty-one thousand shillings over and above the normal school fees over a period of one year in tranches of ten thousand per term.
Ochieng asked who exactly had sent him home since he was aware of a government directive that prohibited headmasters from expelling students and he wanted to
There is a rather meaningless ritual we undertake as a country every year and that is the National Day of Prayer where we invite the world through their embassies and high commissions to let them witness our hypocritical appeal for God’ s guidance. confront the person for clarification.
That is when it turned out that when the nephew went to show the proof of payment of school fees to the bursar, the bursar had queried when he didn’ t see the ten thousand surcharge and warned him that he may be sent back home.
The nephew had then decided he may as well go back home rather than wait to be sent home. Ochieng’ s brother had reasoned, correctly, that he saw no sense in paying a debt for a government that was aware of the cashflow strain caused to schools by the delays.
Ochieng did not even bother to call his brother, he just informed his nephew to get ready to return to school the next day and to wait until his is actually expelled and in such an event he was to call him before leaving Meru. The nephew reappeared at end term as usual.
A year later Ochieng read in the papers that the police were requesting any member of the public that had information of the whereabouts of a headmaster that had absconded with millions from a school and had vanished.
As it turns out, it was the erstwhile headmaster of Ochieng’ s nephew who, as confirmed by the nephew had orchestrated a well-oiled scam that preyed on the parent’ s unwillingness to have their children sent home for a sum of just over two thousand five hundred per month.
It turns out that head teachers in many schools have turned the government inefficiency into a money minting scheme that uses soft threats which are actually never carried out to coerce parents to cough up extra cash to keep students in school.
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