By Betty Luke
Relentless efforts by education stakeholders to ensure all children transit to secondary school in line with government’s 100 percent transition policy might not bear maximum fruits as several parents continue to grapple with poverty.
Isiolo Parents Association has lamented that several children who reported to school for the second term a week ago have been sent back home over lack of school fees.
Majority of the children, the association said, are those who were mopped up from needy families by the stakeholders who made arrangements with local schools to accommodate them while hoping they would benefit from county and CDF bursaries.
Led by the Association’s Chairperson Ismael Galma, the parents lamented that despite the county government promising severally that needy learners would benefit from bursary kitty, nothing had been done.
Mr Galma said he has been receiving calls from desperate parents whose learners have been sent home and reported fears of more unreported cases.
“More than twelve (12) learners have been sent home and it will be very hard to take them back to school if they resume to initial businesses we got them out of,” Mr Galma told journalists in Isiolo town.
He said despite the goodwill from several school heads to keep the learners in school, it was becoming hard for the institutions to run their operations without money.
Mr Galma appealed to parents to pay the little they can to enable school management to run its affairs hoping that the government would be intervene and expedite disbursement of bursaries.
“If you can afford something little, please pay so that the school can allow the learners back,” he said.
His Isiolo Sub-County counterpart Mohamed Sora appealed to the government to intervene and ensure the learners are back to school and continue with their studies.
“What will these children write in their examinations if they are not in school?” Mr Sora posed adding “These children should be in school studying to better their lives not loitering around the villages”
