Students reveal reasons for school unrest in candid exposé

What you need to know:

  • Maranda High School student says they wake up at 4am and end lessons at 10pm, leaving them no time to read own books.
  • St Mary’s Girls’ High School student says the stoned the deputy principal's office because she was against entertainment.

  • Other students admitted that they were just being plain copycats, burning dorms out of peer pressure.

Contrary to what the Education ministry says, fear of examinations does not seem to be the top cause of student unrest in schools.

After interviews with students from various schools across the country that have been closed due to riots, the Sunday Nation has found that much of the unrest stems from a change of rules partly due to massive transfers of school heads who were posted to various institutions in the past couple of months.

A case in point is Maranda High School, where a Form Two student confided in us that learners have a big problem with new rules under a principal who was posted there earlier this year.

FREE TIME

“We have to wake up at 4 am and end lessons at 10 pm, leaving us no time to read our books. Then we have assemblies every time, with our chairs,” said the student. He showed us a list of complaints that included “useless meetings”, three-cycle examinations and poor food.

“The list was written by a Form Four student but it applies to the whole school,” the student added. Then there is the case of St Mary’s Girls’ High School in Mumias, where students claimed they lost their cool after the deputy principal did away with entertainment.

A student at the school said that, days before the burning of a dormitory housing 114 girls, the students had stoned the deputy principal’s office.

“The deputy principal had announced there would be no more entertainment. Students felt she was strict,” said one of the students.

STRICTNESS

Another student said teachers had introduced punishment such as washing and scrubbing of school pavements.

At Kisumu Girls’ High School, some students cited lack of religious freedom and a strict policy on interacting with students from other schools as among the reasons they caused a furore.

Other students admitted that they were just being plain copycats.

For instance at Karatina Girls’ Secondary School in Nyeri County, there was a student protest on Tuesday night and one girl confessed that the main reason was that their “brother school” Kirimara Boys’ High School — where students infamously beat up the deputy principal — had been closed.

“Some girls in Form Three and Four heard that Kirimara students had gone home and they started complaining that it was unfair for us to remain in school. That’s how the fracas started,” said a student at the school.

Kirimara had witnessed riots on Monday, and one student at the institution also cited copycat tendencies.

Some of the planners of the uprising were allegedly heard inciting their peers to “man up” like students of neighbouring Endarasha Boys’ High School had done.

“Forms Three and Four wanted an opportunity to go to town. We had been told that Endarasha were at home and some felt it was unfair they were getting a break. Some even went to Karatina town that night,” a Kirimara student told the Sunday Nation.

However, some of the Kirimara students seemed to have had personal grudges against their teachers, hence the attack on the deputy principal Emmanuel Korir.

Reporting by Elvis Ondieki, Elizabeth Ojina, Nicholas Komu and Soni Kanake.