CS Education must have full control of ministry

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Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba’s admission that he lacks the power to punish school principals who arbitrarily increase school fees is alarming. It lays bare a governance failure that has hollowed out one of the most critical ministries in government.

When a Cabinet Secretary confesses that errant school heads simply “run to their MPs” and escape punishment, what is left of ministerial authority? What, exactly, is the CS there to do? The answer, it would seem, is to compile lists. Ogamba told a workshop in Mombasa that county education directors would gather names of offending principals and forward them to him — so he could hand the list to MPs for action. 

Such a course of action simply reduces a Cabinet Secretary to a messenger between bureaucrats and legislators. The absurdity would be comic were the consequences not so dire. Education is the one sector a country cannot afford to run on patronage and impunity. 

Kenya already staggers under the weight of cascading failures in this sector — crumbling infrastructure, chronic understaffing, delayed capitation, examination cartels, TSC appointment letters reportedly hawked by politicians, and universities churning out graduates into a labour market that cannot absorb them. The system does not need a ceremonial CS. It needs one with full command of his ministry.

In Finland, whose education system is widely regarded as among the world’s best, the minister of education operates with clear statutory authority over curriculum standards, teacher qualifications, and institutional conduct. In Singapore, the education minister directly oversees school leadership. There, school heads are subjected to measurable frameworks designed for accountability under ministerial control. 

The national education policy in South Korea is enforced through a vertical chain of command in which the minister’s directives carry legal force, not merely moral suasion. These are the products of deliberate institutional design. 

Kenya’s current arrangement, where independent commissions and political networks have effectively appropriated the CS’s executive reach, must be reviewed without delay. The Teachers Service Commission, though constitutionally independent, should not become a refuge for principals whose first instinct upon flouting government circulars is to call their MP. There must be a clearer delineation of authority; one that locates ultimate accountability for school conduct squarely in the ministry, with the CS empowered to act swiftly and without political interference.

This, however, is not a call for authoritarianism in education governance. Checks and balances serve a purpose. But checks must not become a labyrinth behind which wrongdoers hide while children pay inflated fees that their overburdened parents can ill afford. Parliament’s role is legislation and oversight, not shielding non-compliant principals from a CS who is merely trying to enforce the law.

Restore the dignity of the ministry. Give the CS his powers back. Kenya’s children deserve an education system run by those with the authority and the will to run it, not the political brokers who seem to have hijacked it.

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