Auditor General finds counties failing ECDE learners and bungling bursaries
New audits by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu found crowded classrooms, too few toilets and teacher shortages in county ECDE centres. In Narok, almost all bursary forms reviewed were incomplete, The Star reported.
Counties are failing to give young learners decent early childhood classrooms, according to new performance audits by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu. The Star reported that the findings cover Nakuru, Murang'a and Narok. The audits found overcrowding, teacher shortages, scarce learning materials and poor buildings in Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) centres. They also question why counties prioritise bursaries over pre-primary education, which the constitution assigns to them. In Nakuru, only 404 of 1,062 ECDE centres met the standard of 25 learners per classroom. Some classrooms had damaged floors, leaking roofs and cracked walls. In all, 573 schools, or 54 per cent, had no toilets for boys, and 584, or 55 per cent, had none for girls. None of the 18 sampled schools had disability-friendly latrines. Five had openings wider than the recommended 20cm by 15cm, which the report said put children at risk of falling in. Where toilets existed, there was one for every 41 boys and one for every 42 girls. The standard is one for every 30 boys and one for every 10 girls. The report said the shortage caused long queues, lost lesson time and learners soiling themselves. Each activity book was shared by between 81 and 166 learners, against a target of one per child. Nakuru employed 847…
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