Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu is putting on a brave face affirming that all is well in the transition of learners to Junior Secondary School.
Machogu, who toured Kisii County on Thursday announced that 96% of learners have reported to school despite the fact that learning is yet to fully take off in a number of public Junior Secondary Schools across the country due to several challenges such as lack of capitation, adequate textbooks and a poor pupil to teacher ratio.
“We expect 100% transition from Grade 6 to Grade 7 and am happy to inform Kenyans that for Junior Secondary Schools we are now at 96%,” Machogu said.
It is more than a month since Junior Secondary Schools across the country opened for the first term.
The government had promised to release capitation funds worth Ksh. 15,000 per learner in JSS, money that is yet to be released, a situation that has left many schools struggling to sustain learning activities.
“We have agreed on a figure of 15,042 per student and that money will be released anytime from now because what we were waiting for is the exact figure and the enrolment per every school,” the CS had said at the time.
The CS also announced that 17,800,000 JSS textbooks have been distributed to public schools across the country however some schools have yet to receive adequate textbooks in all the core learning areas.
Florence Makana a deputy head teacher at Our Lady Of Mercy added: “The textbooks that we have received are for optional subjects like for example German so it’s kind of those books are going to be dumped there because we don’t have the experts.”
Amidst these growing concerns, CS Machogu insisted that the CBC train has already left the station sustaining his dismissal of claims that the government was ill-prepared for this transition.
“The textbooks are out in only a few areas that we have not been able to send the textbooks and that exercise is also ongoing by next week we should have finalised giving textbooks to each and every junior secondary school,” CS Machogu said.
