Protect learners during this long holiday, parents urged

Mombasa businessman Said “Saido” Abdalla has urged parents and community leaders to protect children during the long school holiday.

He warned that idleness and limited parental supervision could expose learners to drugs, crime and other harmful influences.

Saido said children need guidance from parents and the wider community, reviving the traditional approach in which neighbours shared responsibility for raising children.

“This is why I always encourage the return to the olden days when a child was raised by the community and not by individual parents,” he said.

He spoke on Thursday at Maweni Primary School, where he issued success cards to learners ahead of the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) and Kenya Junior School Education Assessment (KJSEA), which begin on Monday.

The Nyali MP hopeful said Kenya could not afford to leave its young people behind as technology advances, arguing that learners needed protection and support to become future innovators.

“Today, we are talking about AI. Next, we don’t know what technological advancement we will be talking about. But this can only happen if we have a generation in the first place,” he said.

Saido warned that children risked being drawn into drug abuse, crime and radicalisation if left without proper guidance.

He also called for parents to be economically empowered, saying financial pressures often forced them to spend long hours working at the expense of time with their children.

“Most of our parents are too busy looking for the next meal for the family. It is here that they start to lose their children because they end up spending too much time looking for money, gradually losing their children to the world without them knowing,” he said.

He said some parents had business ideas but lacked the skills or resources to turn them into viable enterprises, leaving them dependent on poorly paid jobs and long working hours.

Saido urged leaders to take a more active role in mentoring children, saying their responsibility extended beyond providing services to the community.

“Some of these children look up to us as leaders and we need to play a mentor role to them. We need to guide them in the straight path,” he said.

Maweni Primary School headteacher Saum Fadhil Salim said the school had 87 Grade 6 candidates sitting the KPSEA after one candidate, Jackson, died recently.

The school also lost Grade 9 candidate Stacey Achieng, leaving 187 learners preparing for the KJSEA.

Fadhil said long holidays placed additional pressure on parents struggling to balance childcare with the need to earn a living.

She urged parents to have open conversations with their children to build trust and help protect them from exploitation.

She also called for greater attention to the boy child, saying both boys and girls needed protection and guidance.

The headteacher said the school faced challenges, including theft of property by people jumping over its fence, and called for improved security.

She added that many learners came from single-parent households and disadvantaged backgrounds, with some lacking enough food to concentrate in class.

“These children need to be shown more love because majority are from humble backgrounds and come from slum areas. They are bright, but they have too much to think of in their minds that distracts them from the education,” she said.

Fadhil said parents, teachers and learners needed to work together to improve children's welfare and educational outcomes.

Saido pledged to increase support for education through the Said Abdalla Foundation, saying the private sector had a role to play in supporting learners.