The Director of Education Gucha Sub-County David Akhalea has convened a reconciliatory meeting at Bombaba D.O.K primary school following an incident where the head teacher of the school was locked up in her office by irate parents who demanded that she be transferred to another working station on allegations of poor management of the school.
The parents claimed that the school’s new Board of Management was not well selected and consequently not well transitioned from the old board while taking over the management roles, a development the parents believe was intentionally piloted by the head teacher.
Among other allegations are the poor performance of the school academically, which accordingly started dipping when the head teacher joined the school. The reports obtained by KNA revealed that no child scored above the 300 mark in the last Kenya certificate of primary examinations which saw the school register a mean score of 202 marks.
According to Akhalea, the BOM has a total of 14 representatives and parents were given six slots with the remaining slots being filled by three representatives from the school sponsorship, one from special interest group, one from people with disability, a student’s representative, county representative and the head teacher who represents the teachers on the board.
“The majority of the board members are selected from the parents and therefore beats logic for the parents to demonstrate against such a board that they themselves chose to represent them on the matters of the school,” said Akhalea.
The area Deputy County Commissioner Emmanuel Mwachiro during the meeting reminded the parents that it was legally and morally wrong for them to disrupt the smooth running of studies in the school through such heinous acts of violence against the teacher(s).
“You are required to follow the right channel of soliciting for solutions instead of taking the law in your own hands,” Mwachiro said. “Stern action will be taken against such demonstrators because it is beyond their right of peaceful picketing and demonstration,” he added.
Under Article 37 of Kenya’s 2010 Constitution, every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities. The right to assemble is not, though, absolute under the Constitution.
The Deputy County Commissioner noted the negligence the parents have had in the recent past from developing their own school as was evident by the nature of the corroded classrooms that had been worn away probably due to the effects of turning a blind eye to their renovation.
He urged the parents to be part of the school development by supporting programmes that would improve the well-being of the school instead of pointing fingers at the management selfishly.
Bombaba D.O.K primary school has a population of about 400 pupils with a candidature of 53 in the current standard eight. The national examinations of this year which will kick off in the month of November 28 will see both the standard six and standard eight pupils sitting for the exams to transition to junior secondary in the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) and form one in the 8-4-4 system respectively.
