Deputy President William Ruto on Friday stated that all students in technical colleges will get Ksh30,000 grants starting September.
For a while now, various stakeholders in the education sector have been asking the government to step in and issue grants to students to make their stay in colleges more comfortable.
The move by the DP has been welcomed by students in those colleges and if successful, will be one of the landmark achievements of President Uhuru Kenyatta's regime.
[caption caption="DP William Ruto"]
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In March, the government stated that technical colleges in Kenya would also review their fees structure downwards by between 30 to 50 percent in an ambitious move to increase student population.
According to Ruto, plans to enhance technical education began five years ago and are now being intensified.
“It is not possible to make Kenya a middle-income level economy without the men and women who will drive that agenda.
"That is why we had a paradigm shift for we knew that in technical colleges lies the transformation of our country,” he said in March.
Mr Ruto noted that the Kenyan economy would have been at par with Singapore and Malaysia “but was delayed because we left the technical education behind”.
He further added that the government has been constructing at least one technical training college in every constituency, a move that has so far seen over 130 new institutions launched.
Students who fail to achieve the cut-off points to join universities have often been encouraged to join technical colleges but education professionals have noted that there is generally low enrollment due to misguided perceptions.
[caption caption="The University of Nairobi"]
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