Gvt to use remaining 2 primary school classrooms for PP1 and PP2

The government is now pushing for a seamless transition of learners from nursery to secondary schools in new plan to ease tension among parents.

Children in nursery schools may be accommodated in all primary schools as the government seeks to utilise the two classrooms that would be left vacant under the 2-6-3-3-3 education system.

Under the arrangement, all secondary schools will also be required to create space to host junior secondary schools.

The PS for Implementation of Curriculum Reforms, Prof Fatuma Chege, revealed that plans are underway to ‘demolish walls’ to allow for seamless transitions.

“We know that the child in pre-primary will transition to Grade 1, and it does not make much sense to keep the boundaries as they are,” said Chege.

The PS said this would supplement ongoing plans to construct 10,000 classrooms during the transition.

Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha this week said that the National Treasury had released Sh4 billion to the Ministry of Education to begin the first phase of the CBC school infrastructure development programme.

He said the money, in addition to another Sh1.2 billion from the ministry’s infrastructure fund, will be spent to construct 6,500 classrooms in 6,371 secondary schools.

“This programme seeks to address the classroom deficit in our public secondary schools to allow for a smooth transition of CBC Grade 6 learners to junior secondary in January 2023,” said Magoha.

And speaking yesterday, PS Chege said the Ministry of Education had also written to the Council of Governors for the purposes of designing a policy that will enable counties to work with the national government “to share resources to support that child who is in pre-primary as they learn CBC and transition seamlessly to primary school.” 

This, she said, was part of the grand transition plan to break walls in close collaboration with counties.

“Working with counties to ‘demolish the walls,’ is to note that as primary school tenure reduces to six years, there is space that will be left by Standard 7 and 8,” said Chege.

The PS was speaking on the side-lines of a conference jointly organised by the Ministry of Education and the Kenya Institute of Special Education.

The national conference on special needs education held under the theme, Functional assessment: Enhancing access to quality services for every child and youth, was attended by researchers, special education experts, teachers, students, parents, policy makers and other stakeholders to discuss inclusive education.