The rate of indiscipline in schools is alarming, despite intense searches on reporting days, many students still manage to smuggle stuff into their dormitories.
Teachers have recovered mobile phones from shoe soles and sanitary pads.
Other students are sewing tablets, cigarettes and rolls of bhang in the hems of their clothes.
These are some of the creative ways students are using to sneak contraband into schools. Some of the outlawed goods are sneaked hidden in detergents.
Despite intense searches on reporting days, many students still manage to smuggle stuff into their dormitories.
In some schools, students have complained that they are forced to strip naked as teachers seek to ensure outlawed items are not smuggled. The students say they are searched in “all manner of places”.
But the searches seem not to have deterred many. Instead, students have devised sophisticated ways of smuggling what they want.
Nakuru county director of education William Sugut said they have devised ingenious ways to sneak contrabands including accessing and abusing drugs.
He said the menace has reached epidemic proportions.
He said fruit juices, cigarettes and wines and spirits are among stuff being smuggled by the students.
Sugut said drug and substance abuse could be behind the rising cases of indiscipline, including arson attacks in schools.
“Unless we choose to bury our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, drugs are the most dangerous contraband that can find its way to school. The reality is that students are always a step ahead of their teachers in inventing new ways of smuggling and concealing outlawed items in school,” Sugut said.
He said some parents have contributed to crime and the unrests in schools because they “overprotect” their children when they are caught in deviant acts.
He said students fund smuggling drugs and other items will be treated as criminals.
“In many cases, contraband has been hidden in shoe soles, the seams of clothes and inside detergents. Creative students would carve out a section of the shoe sole and ‘bury’ the contraband before they are smuggled into schools,” he said.
“We need the support of parents to control this threat. When schools are razed due to acts of indiscipline that are sometimes caused by use of narcotics, the burden is passed on to guardians and parents,” Sugut said.
The official also warned principals, saying their absence from schools has greatly contributed to poor management which leads to unrests.