12. Education, Science and Technology

Education is the foundation as well as the pillar that supports not only the growth but also the existence of a prosperous nation. The country’s development cannot be actualized in the absence of a relevant, focused and purposeful system in place Presently, the country lacks a comprehensive education policy that would put in place the necessary foundation and supporting pillars. Our education programmes are heavily biased towards academics and thereby making the education system inadequate in terms of requisite capacity to spur the achivement of national goals of development. A FORD-People led government will work towards the realization of the goal of providing basic education up to secondary level backed by robust research domiciled in higher institutions of learning that make quality education easily accessible, affordable and responsive to modern day market demands. To realize the above vision, a FORD-People government will implement the following:

▪ Allocate more resources towards the improvement of facilities in both primary and secondary schools as well as in tertiary institutions with a view to taming the growing numbers of school drop outs. We will therefore seek to invert the pyramid so that it is bottom heavy and top lean.

▪ Promote adult education programs as a way of dealing with illiteracy with a view to attaining a literacy level of 80% within a period of five years.

▪ Encourage the development of technology parks in our local universities to hasten technology transfer to Kenyans and to promote the concept of business incubation and venture capital.

▪ Increase allocation to the research kitty in order to spur the growth of local industries with emphasis on the use of locally available resources.

▪ Emphasize affirmative action for the education of the girl child at all levels of education

▪ Encourage rewarding output rather than paper achievements at all levels of education

▪ Pay special attention to education for the physically challenged persons as well as the marginalized

▪ Ensure relevance between educational and economic growth therefore making education responsive to market needs.

▪ With involvement of the private sector and in order to maximize on resource utilization, encourage the introduction of the shift system in our public universities therefore increasing student intake while at the same time checking drop out rates.

▪ Ensure that the human resource of this country has good access to continuous education as a way of ensuring that the Kenyan workforce is in tune with technological developments around the world

▪ Encourage reverse engineering, innovation, value addition and business incubation in order to put Kenya on a competitive footing globally.

▪ Emphasize the teaching of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in our schools and the application of the concepts of e-learning, e-commerce and e-governance

▪ Make quality primary and secondary education free and compulsory