Parents Lament On Cost Of School Uniforms

The association wants the Ministry of Education, together with CS George Magoha, to establish simpler directives for schools to follow when it comes to purchasing school uniforms.

"This new directive by some school heads is just misinformed. Parents will even end up spending over Ksh20,000 to buy uniforms alone and they have not paid fees. This makes education too expensive for ordinary Kenyans.

"I think it will be best if Prof Magoha intervenes and save parents from this new scheme," a representative of the Kenya Parents' Association remarked.

Parents across the country have threatened to hold protests in response to a mandate that requires them to buy school uniforms from specified stores.

The majority of parents seeking to admit their children to secondary schools claim that the admission letters specify where uniforms and other school supplies may be purchased.

Parents have expressed dissatisfaction with the way schools are directing them to certain stores where they can purchase uniforms as the learning institutions will refuse to allow their children when school returns next week if they fail to purchase school uniforms from the specified shops.

Some parents explained that the chosen stores sell uniforms at higher prices than other stores.

"We have been asked to only buy uniforms from specific shops which are selling them very expensively overburdening us even as we prepare to take our children back to school," complained a parent.

The CS while launching form one selection had warned school principals against demanding items such as exercise books, novels, atlases, foolscaps, photocopying papers, pangas, and hockey sticks and termed them as unnecessary items that were raising the cost of education.

KUPPET Boss, Omboko Milema, recently proposed that school uniforms in Kenya should be banned as they are expensive and cause some students to miss classes thereby hindering basic education in the country.