The Ministry of Education began examining classrooms built by private schools to accommodate junior secondary school (JSS) students for compliance.
The classrooms are intended to supplement those being built by the government in anticipation of a boom in enrolment as learners enrolled in the competency-based curriculum (CBC) shift to junior secondary in January.
“Private schools are already building CBC classrooms. We’re going to inspect them from the first of next month. We shall do that for about two weeks across the country so that, by the time we give you the final report on public classrooms, we shall also be telling you that we have inspected and confirmed the number of classrooms in private institutions,” Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha said.
The ministry stated that junior secondary schools will be housed in secondary schools. It has, however, encouraged private primary schools with junior secondary wings to accept some of the kids. Secondary school teachers will instruct the students in such settings. According to the most recent government data, there are 203,448 students enrolled in private secondary schools.
Private schools that want to open secondary school sections must re-register with the ministry. Primary education will be expanded to Grade Six under the CBC, which means that private schools who do not offer junior secondary risk losing business.
Junior secondary will consist of Grades 7, 8, and 9, after which students will progress to senior secondary for Grades 10, 11, and 12. The length of time spent at university has also been lowered from four to three years.
At least 1.25 million Grade Six students will take the Kenya Primary Education Assessment, which will replace the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education, while 1,320,395 8-4-4 students will begin Form One.
This is predicted to increase secondary school enrolment from 4,381,701 to 6,029,168. When the last class of the 8-4-4 graduates from primary school in 2024, the double intake will be repeated.
In January of next year, 2,300 public elementary schools will host JSS.
This comes as the government continues to scramble at the last minute to ensure that there are adequate classrooms for Grade Seven students.
Magoha stated yesterday that the chosen primary schools are those that share a compound with secondary schools.
The CS was addressing at Pumwani Boys High School in Nairobi, where he oversaw the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) classrooms.
Magoha has been traveling from county to county, commissioning classroom building in various schools.
“We have said as a government, when a high school and a primary school are within the same compound, we shall also use the physical resources that are there,” he said.
So far, the highest performing counties include Nandi, Nyandarua, Kisii, and Nyamira, all of which have finished some classrooms.
Last month, the government built over 10,000 classrooms for junior secondary phase one.
This month, he began the construction of nearly 3,500 classrooms for phase two.
The Education Ministry had requested that Parliament propose and approve the distribution of additional funds to provide for junior secondary school pupils in January of next year, as cash for students was not included in the 2022/23 budget.
Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Jwan and his Implementation of Curriculum Reforms counterpart Fatuma Chege said in their response to the National Assembly Education and Research committee on the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) 2022 that if the government fails to budget for tuition, the rollout of junior secondary could be stalled.
“No capitation has been given to junior secondary school pupils in the budget estimates for the fiscal year 2022/23,” Jwan stated. Only funds for classrooms were made available.
The Education Ministry had asked Parliament to recommend and approve allocation of additional funds to cater for junior secondary school students in January next year as cash for the students has been left out in the 2022/23 budget.
In their response to the National Assembly Education and Research committee on the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) 2022, Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Jwan and his Implementation of Curriculum Reforms counterpart Fatuma Chege said the rollout of junior secondary could be paralysed if the government fail to budget for tuition.
“No capitation has been allocated to go to junior secondary school students in the budget estimates for the 2022/23 financial year,” said Jwan. Only cash for classrooms was allocated.