President William Ruto has urged Kenyans to dust off the communal child-rearing values that once defined African societies, saying the approach holds the key to ending the wave of disturbances that has swept through the country’s schools. The president made the remarks during the 60th anniversary celebrations of Burieruri Boys Senior School in Meru County, where he told the gathered community that reclaiming those values was not nostalgia but necessity.
“Let us recover the wisdom of African parenting, where no child belonged to one household alone,” Ruto told the gathering, invoking the long-held principle that an entire community shares responsibility for its young. He argued that when villages and neighbourhoods take a collective stake in the upbringing of children, the result is the kind of character and moral grounding that no classroom syllabus can manufacture on its own.
Ruto commended Burieruri Boys Senior School for maintaining a strong discipline record, though he was quick to caution that academic achievement divorced from moral development is an incomplete victory. “Knowledge may sharpen the mind, but only discipline governs its use,” he said, calling on schools across the country to treat character-building as equal in importance to examination performance.
The president did not let parents off lightly either. He challenged them to step beyond token involvement and become genuinely present in their children’s educational lives — showing up not just for prize-giving days but during the difficult stretches when young people most need guidance. Ruto said parental absence during those critical moments is itself a form of failure that communities can ill afford.
The anniversary event also brought substantial government commitments for the school and its neighbours. The state pledged KSh40 million to construct 30 new classrooms at Burieruri Boys Senior School, while nearby Ncunguru Primary School will receive KSh20 million for an additional 20 classrooms. A further KSh70 million has been earmarked for a multipurpose hall at Burieruri, a development Ruto said is part of plans to elevate the institution to national school status.
Ruto also placed the announcements within the broader education funding story his administration has been telling since 2022. The national education budget has grown from KSh526 billion when he took office to KSh784 billion in the upcoming fiscal year — a figure he presented as evidence of the government’s seriousness about investing in Kenya’s human capital. He linked the school-level commitments to wider infrastructure projects underway across Meru County, signalling that the region sits firmly within the government’s development crosshairs.
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