President Ruto to Scrap HELB

In todays latest HELB News – The Kenyan government has pledged to enhance the country’s educational system. William Ruto, the current president, claims he has spent the last four months of his term preparing the basis for a major reform in the field of education.

Ruto has pledged to eliminate funding for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and to replace it with a national skills and funding council, which will facilitate a credit transfer system and help students advance through their education.

Grants, bursaries, and scholarships from private and public donors will be pooled by the National Education Fund to cover expenses beyond tuition.

The government will create the National Skill and Financing Council by merging Helb, TVET, and the University Funding Board in order to close the present funding gap in higher education, which is up to 45 percent.

Higher Education Loans Board financing would increase from Sh11 billion to Sh22 billion, and interest will be waived for all Helb loans.

At a New Year’s Eve party at State House in Mombasa, Ruto announced that the government plans to increase funding for the industry.

To facilitate a seamless transition into the first year of junior high, he said 30,000 more basic education teachers and 3,000 TVET tutors would be hired this year.

We plan to create an elite workforce by investing in our educational system. To facilitate a smooth transition from elementary to middle school, President Ruto announced in January that the government will begin hiring more instructors.

To address the existing shortage of 116,000 teachers, Ruto said the government will hire a share of the projected 58,000 instructors per year for Sh25 billion over the next two years.

Among the government-sponsored training he mentioned was CPD for teachers.

Ruto also stated that the government plans to spend Sh15 billion equipping 70 TVET colleges to help train students and get them ready for the workforce.

The Kenya Kwanza Alliance has promised in its Education Charter to build Vocational Training Centres in every ward and to establish a Technical Training and Vocational Educational Training Institution in every constituency (TVET).

The remaining 52 constituencies will each have their own Tvet institution up and running within two years, according the charter’s mandate.

Because “TVET offers the best human capital that is tailored toward Science, Technical, Engineering, and Mathematics (Stem) disciplines and areas that will take us to engineering because that is the future we seek,” we will also engage tutors to oversee our TVET institutions.

According to Ruto, the government will be better able to streamline human capital and sharpen and address difficulties in the education sector as a result of the Presidential Working Party’s suggestions.

We recognize that the duration of the programme has placed a tremendous financial burden on many educational institutions. We’re going to focus our attention to guaranteeing that our colleges have the resources they need to provide a top-notch education.

In addition, he suggested creating a public institution of higher education and expanding the current network of three technical universities over eight administrative divisions.

There will be a renewed emphasis on universities specializing in their areas of strength.

For instance, “Universities in Mombasa should provide courses on the blue economy,” whereas “universities in Turkana would focus on mining.”