SHOULD LAPTOP MONEY BE USED TO PAY TEACHERS?

[omundustrong]

Every song has a climax,every food has that delicious piece that you finish the meal with,every news has its hook,every campaign has its "wow factor"what iam calling wow factor is that promise to the electorate that looks unachievable,not sensible,not rational but if implemented has the ability to assure the electorate that indeed the government has the credibility to deliver on its campaign promises and the benefits from the program have far reaching benefits for the population.

This hook for president Moi was the free primary school milk-popularly known as "Nyayo milk" for some of us who partook of this milk we have story to tell how we all looked forward to break time with sweet potatoes carried from home to "feast".

For Kibaki it was free primary school.Despite the challenges of the system,the enrollment of pupils in primary schools went up by over 1 million pupils.As to whether the quality of education was compromised that is a story for another day.

Now back to the thrust of my topic,it is my take that free laptops for all standard one pupils was an inspired campaign promise that needs to be implemented without diverting the cash to any other venture.This, in my view, is an idea whose time has come.If we are to churn out a generation that will embrace technology in all aspects of its life,then there is no good time like today.If we start imparting the skills,attitudes and knowledge neccessary to navigate in the technological world the benefits are going to be gigantic for this country that then we just might,and i mean might ,just achieve on our much vaunted vision 2030 that increasingly draws near.When i was young we used to hear of water for all by 2010,it never happened because we didnt invest anything in achieving the vision.

In this age and time, every government should be held accountable for its obligations to the people.If a government for instance promises teachers an increment in 1997 it does not make sense two election cycles later to be still talking about this.What does one regime hand over to the other?Can the common mwananchi be told at the end of each cycle what was achieved what was not so that a succeeding regime is not held accountable for promises it never made.

Government needs to be run like a corporate entity,where during handing and taking over we as the people need to be told the liabilities that are being taken over and whether this was as a result of failure on the handing over regime so that we hold the people responsible personally accountable.The score card should be very clear so that we dont carry forward obligations that should have been dealt with by the outgoing regime.

To cut the long story short,money budgeted for laptops for pupils should be utilized for laptops,money meant to pay the teachers should have been budgeted for.When the MPs started clamouring for salary increase it didnt require a genius to tell the government that a pandoras box had been opened and all other sectors of government were going to be up in arms demanding for the same.

Therefore the free laptop to every pupil should be implemented without diverting the cash to any other venture,we may just be launching the future techno-savvy population that will propel this country in the new dispensation to new heights.For posterity let us start this program now.

[omundustrong]

Efforts by the Deputy Minority leader,Mr Jakoyo Midiwo to re-allocate the cash meant for Laptops was defeated in Parliament today.This being Jubilee's pet project it is not going to be easy to derail it.

[50cents]

This laptop idea was the most stupid idea somebody ever came up with. Trust me, even in the first world there are no laptops
in schools.

My advice to Uhuru lurkers(stooges) here is to ask him to first test the idea for 2-3 solid years whether it will work before
spreading it country wide. Let him choose two primary schools - one in rift valley and one in kiambu then and only then can he
know that this was just a campaign pipe dream.

Free advice to you lurkers

[omundustrong]

This is what Jaindi Kisero said on the much derided project of Laptops.

Diverting money meant for laptops to pay teachers won’t save economy

By JAINDI KISERO [e-mail]
Posted Tuesday, June 25 2013 at 19:00


I find the argument that the government should divert the money it plans to spend on buying laptops for primary school children to paying better salaries for striking teachers foolish.
As taxpayers, what we should be asking is whether it makes economic sense to spend a high share of the budget for education on teachers’ salaries compared to what spend on textbooks, laboratory chemicals and equipment, exercise books – even laptops, for school children.
We are experiencing what economists call a severe recurrent costs financing crisis. How do you tell that you are drifting deeper into such a crisis?
It is when you find that a far greater proportion of the money you collect from the taxpayer ends up in paying salaries, pensions of civil servants and teachers, and interest on borrowed money.
You will build many hospitals, health centres and dispensaries. But since a far greater proportion of your budget for health will have been consumed by salaries, you will not have enough for hospital beds, medicines and ambulances for your dispensaries and health centres.
Since agriculture is the backbone of your economy, you will devote a very large share of the money you collect from the taxpayer to fund agricultural and livestock programmes.
But because a disproportionate share of your budget will have been consumed by salaries and other recurrent costs, what is left will not be enough to adequately fund agricultural extension services in rural areas.
The recurrent costs financing crisis we are experiencing manifests itself in many other ways: Police stations without enough fuel to run their cars, secretaries without enough computers and stationery, and government drivers who sit idle the whole day because there are no cars to drive.
How did we get where we are today? Until Dr Richard Leakey and the Dream Team came to town around 2000, the central government’s wage bill as a share of the GDP was at around 9 per cent.
In those days, a civil service job for a university graduate or a person coming out of government-owned training college was almost a God-given entitlement.
Dr Leakey and his team mounted one of the most aggressive civil service retrenchment programmes to happen in Kenya.
This is the around the same period when the government discontinued automatic employment of graduates.
When you track the trends, especially after the retrenchment programmes, you will find that the ratio of the wage bill to GDP dropped to around 7 per cent from the late 1990s to the current situation where it is at an unprecedented 12 per cent level.
In the last three years, the annual growth rate of the wage bill averaged about 13 per cent.
But things went haywire last year: the wage bill grew by 27 per cent in just 12 months, mainly as a result of pressures posed by an expanded State, salary awards to teachers and the police, and proliferating constitutional commissions.
This is the context against which the current spat between the government and the teacher’s union must be understood.
I am not saying that teachers don’t have a point. Indeed, this strike is basically a response to inequalities in public service wages.
Within the public sector today, you have tiny enclaves of highly-paid public servants working side by side with poorly remunerated colleagues even where they have comparable skills

[mank]

Jun 28, 2013 22:36:28 GMT 3 50cents said:

This laptop idea was the most stupid idea somebody ever came up with. Trust me, even in the first world there are no laptops
in schools.

My advice to Uhuru lurkers(stooges) here is to ask him to first test the idea for 2-3 solid years whether it will work before
spreading it country wide. Let him choose two primary schools - one in rift valley and one in kiambu then and only then can he
know that this was just a campaign pipe dream.

Free advice to you lurkers

It was for the stupid season. It would be stupid to stick with stupid promises of the stupid season during a non-stupid season.

It would be a terrible idea to chose a school in RV and another in Kiambu to test the laptop idea. Of course if focused on a few schools it would work marvellously. At the country scale it would be belly-up in no time. But if Uhuru decides to pilot the program with a few schools, I would be most pleased if my neighbourhood school, the same onoe I and my siblings attended, is on the list.

Yet saying the laptop idea is a flop is not implied agreement with the idea that laptop funds should be channeled to teachers' salaries. The reason the laptop idea would flop is due to limited resources, not because kids would not make use of the gadgets. So shelving laptop idea should not justify directing whatever funds would have gone into laptops to uses other than improving school programs. It is perhaps more fitting to say that some funds that are now unearned take-away by mPigs should be redirect to a school laptop program to make the laptop idea work, than to say that because the laptop idea won't work then there's money there to direct to some salaries!

Teachers deserve better pay. But kids deserve more resources for their learning too. We just need to reassess our priorities and budget appropriately. Unfortunately at this time bloating government and the pockets of individuals in government seem to be the priority.

[federa]

So now its tablets and not laptops.

www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000087958&story_title=government-considering-tablets-over-laptops