The Government is committed to continue investing in education to empower young people and build a labour force that will underwrite the country’s development.
Principal Secretary of Education, Ministry of Education Belio Kipsang assured that the government will continue to focus more on enhancing education systems in the country for quality learning.
Speaking while opening a three-day children’s devolution conference at Mpesa Foundation Academy in Thika, Kiambu County, Kipsang noted that the government has shown tremendous interest to empower young people through education for posterity.
He singled out that the government had in the 2023/2024 budget allocated Ksh 628 billion towards expenditures in the education sector.
These, among other initiatives, PS Kipsang reiterated were meant to better the environment of learners for the future.
He lauded the collaborations that the national government has been having with local governments in various sectors such as early childhood education insisting on the need for the two levels of government to work together to ensure that learners access quality education.
The PS upheld that the government is working towards addressing the challenges in the education sector including tooling teachers and employing enough of them, infrastructural issues, social-cultural gaps that learners have been facing among them, and teenage pregnancies among others.
Kiambu Governor Kimani Wamatangi who was joined by his Wajir and Mombasa counterparts Ahmed Abdullahi and Abdullswamad Sheriff Nassir respectively revealed that his government had embarked on an ambitious ECDE school feeding program to keep learners in class.
Under the program, Wamatangi noted that children will be getting eggs and porridge daily to retain them in school.
Following an upsurge in the number of street families in the county, the governor noted that his administration will begin putting up safe homes for the neglected children
During the conference, Robert Simiyu, the UNICEF representative, called on the government to increase budgetary allocations for education systems, insisting that all children remain in school and continue studying uninterrupted.
