By Dickens Wasonga

As schools re-opened countrywide last week, parents with children in public primary schools within Kisumu municipality now want the government to rescue them from the hands of rogue head teachers, who have turned the schools into private academies to aid them mint cash.

When the government introduced the free and compulsory primary education in 2003, many parents were hopeful that the days of illegal levies would be a thing of the past, but as things stand now, school managers appears to have only become more innovative than before.

A number of primary school heads within Kisumu municipality have since come up with a system which ensures they continue collecting money from the unsuspecting parents.

The schemes of the heads is aided by the fact that many parents are too desperate, only too willing to enroll their children into the schools.

Independent investigations revealed that the current trick adopted by the unscrupulous head teachers is to form school management committees whose composition is made up of a few rich and influential parents, who in turn dictate terms to their fellow parents, who may not be financially stable.

To conceal their under hand schemes, and hood wink the district education board that nothing sinister is a foot, the rich parents collude with the head teachers to sneak in, or introduce several levies, purported to have been proposed and approved by the entire parents population, while in reality that is not the case.

What the influential parents do is to literally force the levies down the throats of the not so well off colleagues, and the trend now has resulted into two categories of public primary schools in the city- public schools for the poor, and another for the rich, which deny children from poor families the chance to learn.

Our investigations found out that many parents who are not able to meet the exorbitant costs have been forced to withdraw their children from these schools, to look for alternative ones elsewhere.

The spot check by this newspaper showed that the levies, among them, the so called parental obligation fee, ranges between sh 8500 to 11,000 per year, and is charged in almost all the public primary schools within the municipality.

A head teacher of one such school retorted arrogantly during an interview that the cost of learning had gone up, and as such parents must be willing to pay more.Those who are not ready to pay should transfer their children back to the rural schools where such levies were minimal.

“The cost of education has become very expensive and parents must be ready to pay. Whoever is opposed to this must find alternative elsewhere and not in my school,” said the head teacher.

Parental obligation fees for example, which the head teachers purport to have been approved by the parents from their respective schools, and the district education board, ranges between sh 2000 to 2500, which does not include school uniform.

The schools also require parents who want new admission for their children to pay a non refundable application fee of sh 3000 per child.

A parent who spoke to this newspaper on condition of anonymity said last week he was forced to transfer all his three children from one of the notorious schools to nearby school where the charges were slightly affordable.

“These extortion like levies is the order of the day in all the schools here, only the rates are different, but now I feel a bit relieved. A part from the sh 150 that I pay per year as parental obligation in the current school, am only worried about the transport cost for my children to and from school” he said.

Although it was apparent from the investigations that many pupils from poor family backgrounds especially those living in Kisumu’s sprawling slums like Nyalenda, Obunga, Manyatta, Bandani and others have obviously been denied the opportunity to go to school, little is being done by the authorities to reverse the trend.

George Omondi, the out going education officer of Kisumu municipality said he had received several complaints from parents, but claims his hands are tied, because such levies are normally approved by school management committees.

However the M.E.O was not able to explain why many of the committees of schools under his docket were not holding elections regularly as required, and continue to be in office to serve selfish interest of corrupt head teachers, to the chagrin of the other parents.

ENDS