Utumishi Girls fire tragedy: Here are the hard truths

Let’s first take care of the parents who lost their children and the injured girls in the Utumishi Girls’ Academy fire tragedy before we apportion the blame.

Let’s help them heal if you can. Think of the parental dreams for their daughters, now turned into nightmares.

This incident will haunt families for the rest of their lives. To the families who lost their children in the arson attack, take heart; they are our children, too. 

The fire should be investigated, as with an air crash, to determine the root cause. There will be speculations from arson to electrical faults. 

My hair stood on end (never mind my bald head) when I heard it could have been orchestrated by some students.

It seems the mantra “what men can do, women can do better” has been actualised. Who are the parents of these girls?

Understanding their background could help stop such acts in future. As expected, we shall get quick culprits, most likely helpless teachers, unlikely to be heard in the media. It will soon be hard to recruit teachers in Kenya. 

Let us focus on the bigger picture and ask hard questions. The doors to our dorms were never closed at night. That surprised me, having grown up near a national park in the White Highlands with carnivores. Now I know why. 

Why are the doors closed today? There are two reasons: one is insecurity. If schools and even our homes were secure, with no fear of burglary or thieves, our doors would remain open and be made of wood, not ugly metals.

If we want to make our dorms safe from fire, let us make the country secure. Not from hyenas or lions but fellow human beings! Security will also reduce the cost of housing to make it more affordable. How much money goes to perimeter walls and metallic grills? 

I would love to visit Utumishi. How many escape routes from the upper floors? Are the dorms designed for the worst-case scenario?

Were there any “shortcuts” in the design of the complete buildings?  One ingenious security measure I found at Starehe Girls’ is a teacher’s house attached to a dorm. The teacher would be a first responder. Beyond that, technology takes over from CCTV to smoke detectors. Doors are closed for another reason: indiscipline. There is fear in many schools that students might sneak out if the doors are left open. Once we retired the cane, indiscipline became the bane of many schools.

Teachers are silent to protect their jobs. You could punish “the wrong child”. 

The third issue is school size and the number of students. Small- or medium-sized schools are easier to manage and are safer. They also allow the holistic growth of the children. 

We have fallen in love with mega projects. Our schools have been turned into mega schools. A school with over 2,000 students is not uncommon.

I noted a school with about 1,000 Form Four students in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).

It’s in dorms, in the dormitories, where overcrowding is common.

Ever wondered why only dorms and rarely classrooms or libraries burn? Do you focus on feeding such numbers or their security with late capitation? 

About four years ago, I asked what the optimal size of a school was. This was after taking a child to school, where even the social hall was converted into a dorm! Head teachers are given students; how to house them is their problem.  Managing school is tough nowadays. Do our school heads have the same liberty and power to manage the schools as Carey Francis, Geoffrey Griffin or their contemporaries?

Why can’t parents elect all the board members? It’s their school. How does one become a school head nowadays? 

Where do we go from here? The easiest and laziest recommendation is to do away with boarding schools. That’s long-term. We must first build good schools accessible to our children in their locality. One attraction for boarding schools is good academic performance. 

Today, and I will repeat it for the 10th time, we have neglected our schools. Why don’t we build a Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) or expressway equivalent for our schools? When did we last build a new school from scratch?

One strange development in Nairobi is former primary schools being divided into two, giving birth to a senior school. Examples are Vetlab and Loresho.

Housing levy

Why can’t we get land for schools just like SGR or roads? Are our children not the most important resource, more than cars and trains? Why can’t we use the housing levy to buy land and build more schools or dorms? Are dorms not houses? Children are helpless; we have let them down. Curiously, I have not seen a mega-project in education or health funded by donors. Hospital or school?   

Let’s cap the size of the schools; my guess is 1,500 students.

Ensure security in schools. Why can’t police guard schools like other government buildings? Why do police only appear in schools during exams?  

Let us build schools like homes; they are students’ second homes. There should be privacy and space. We seem to suffer from a colonial hangover; that suffering is honourable. Schooling should be memorable; it’s part of our lives.  

Finally, did I hear a proposal to have all schools wear the same uniform? We should instead do away with uniforms; they raise the cost of schooling. And it does not raise the level of discipline. Police in uniform collect bribes!