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Police team formed to arrest teachers conducting holiday tuition


The government has formed a rapid response police unit to arrest teachers who are found conducting holiday tuition this month, Education Principal Secretary has said.

Speaking at his Jogoo House office Friday when he flagged off a group of students who are attending the East African Secondary Schools Games Championships in Rwanda, Dr Belio Kipsang said he is working with Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet to help in arresting and prosecute teachers found teaching during the August holiday.

“Tuition remains banned and therefore anyone conducting it is doing something illegal. We have engaged IG Joseph Boinnet to give us a rapid response team to arrest those found conducting holiday tuition,” said Dr Kipsang.

According to the law, teachers who are caught breaking the holiday tuition regulations are liable to a fine not exceeding Sh100,000 or imprisonment of one year or to both.

AWAY FROM SCHOOL

Holiday Tuition was banned in 2008 by then Education minister Sam Ongeri who said  students were becoming stressed due to non-stop learning and needed more time away from school.

Dr Kipsang’ said that the students needed to spend their holidays learning life skills.

“Allow the young Kenyans to rest and be real people, we want them to learn the skills that we learnt in our time, those who come from areas where there are cows should learn how to milk, others should learn how to pick tea and those from maize growing areas need to know how to weed,” said Dr Kipsang.

He emphasized that when the curriculum was being created, they had factored in the learning hours and knew they would be suffice.

“Schools do not need more learning time, when the school terms were being created, we factored in the learning hours,” he said.