Great Lakes (Education Providers) - Westminster Hall debates. Tuesday, 21 June 2005

Paul Rowen (Rochdale, LDem)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) for raising this debate on a topical and important issue. Like him, I recently visited a school in my constituency and was pleased to see the children preparing the cut-outs that the teacher will take up to Gleneagles. That is a visual way of emphasising the importance of universal primary education, something we tend to take for granted in this country but which, in many parts of Africa, people struggle and save to get.

I want to use my experience in this field. Until the election on 5 May I was a teacher in a school in Bradford that had a link with a school in Kenya, and I have the papers in front of me on the group of students who will, I hope, come over to this country in a few weeks' time. I have also been involved in Uganda where I saw at close hand some of the work being done, particularly to develop primary education and, as the country grows, to address the need to expand secondary education and put in place systems of educational administration to allow the country to evolve.

I shall start with Kenya. I first got involved in Kenya back in 1992 when, as a member of my community, I was asked to help raise the funds to build a school in what was then part of the President of Kenya's constituency. Having got a container full of material from schools in Bradford, the container went missing and the material never got to the schools for which it was intended. That emphasises one of the issues that people face; corruption. Although the people in the schools wanted the materials, certain officials along the way were keen that the money went elsewhere. I therefore believe that systems of governance and control are key in terms of any funding and support that we develop for the future.

Thankfully, when Mwai Kibaki was elected a few years ago-I know that there are problems with his Government at the moment-one of the first things that his Government did was to reintroduce primary education. However, last year, when I took a group of students from Bradford to Kenya, I saw at first hand the effect of a blanket reintroduction of universal education without the necessary funding. The primary school that I visited, with which we have a link, had seen its roll grow by 60 per cent. There were over 1,000 students in that school, and it had had an extra two teachers to cope with the influx. The only way in which the school was able to cope was by running the school in two shifts. Although it is good that children are getting primary education, they may not get the full quota, and there are still children in Mygat in the Rift valley who are not being educated. Again, the only way in which progress will be made is for there to be greater expansion of training of teachers and investment in buildings.

In Uganda, except in the north of the country, there has been a very long period of stable democratic government, although we will see what happens next year when the multi-party elections take place. That has enabled many schools to develop. I have visited several schools in Uganda, and have seen at close hand the work that they have done. I have also seen the work that the British Council has done. It has introduced initiatives such as working with the administration in Masindi to organise exchanges of education officers with officers in this country. That has gone a long way, not just to deal with the issue of providing universal education, but to develop the systems that need to be put in place to support its structure. I hope that the Minister will be able to encourage the development of more schemes such as those. They have provided lasting links, which have enabled both groups of young people to move forward together, and helped to develop education for students both in Bradford and in Kenya and Uganda. The next few months provide an historic opportunity to build on that good will. I hope that the links and the experience that has developed over the past few years can be developed further.