The transition of the first Competency Based Education (CBE) students from grade 9 to 10 in January 2026 has generated a lot of interest for educational, social, commercial and even political reasons. For most students it entailed changing schools from their junior schools (mainly their former primary schools) to senior schools elsewhere.
Matatus made business ferrying these students, uniform and mattress shops made money; stationery shops laughed all the way to the banks. Parents jubilated when their children were admitted to schools of their choice. Many others did not have the resources to join this crucial grade in their educational ladder hence they were unhappy. I wish to address three issues observed in the 2026 transition and how it will affect the 2027 transition.
First, senior schools were by January 1, 2026 having only two cohorts of students; the 2026 form 3 and 4 students. This implied that they were 50% enrolled compared to the previous 8.4.4 students when they had forms 1 to 4. From January 12, 2026 cluster 1, 2 and 3 schools were under immense pressure to admit extra students since these are the better endowed schools hence in demand. Most of these schools enrolled double their previous intakes due to the spaces available to them.
This meant that a lot of students that would have enrolled in cluster 2 schools enrolled in cluster 1 and likewise those from cluster 3 to 2 providing space for a huge number of cluster 4 students to move to cluster 3. This led to serious under enrolment of cluster 4 schools leading to some sections of the press labelling them as unwanted schools. Some of these cluster 4 schools are good except that they have been affected by the law of nature abhors vacuums. This leads me to the second observation.
The Cabinet Secretary Dr. Julius Ogamba and the Principal Secretary Prof Julius Bitok reacted to the above scenario by declaring that some of these cluster 4 schools need to be closed or merged so that the teachers can be deployed elsewhere and facilities used for other purposes. By expressing these intensions, they have expressed their ignorance on this subject of transition and exposed that the planning unit of the Ministry does not give them quality advice. The form four students of 2026 are slightly less than one million students.
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They will create this number of spaces by January 2027 for grade 10 students of 2027. The grade 9 students of 2026 are almost 1.3 million and will be competing for the less than 1 million spaces in grade 10 in 2027. This means that close to 300,000 students will be available to be admitted in cluster 4 schools then.
The option of closing or merging this schools in 2026 when they will be required in 2027 does not make sense. What the Ministry should be doing is to work on modalities of sustaining and expanding these schools in 2026 to make them more attractive in 2027 and beyond. They may require a supplementary budget since these schools cannot survive on capitation in 2026 on account of very low enrolments.
The third observation concerns the students from poor backgrounds who need assistance to access senior schools. In 2023, 2024 and 2025 primary school students were transitioning to junior schools within their previous primary schools at minimal costs as they commuted from their homes. For this reason the poor students were not exposed and we almost forgot about them. Transition to grade 10 required major changes in costs leading to exposure of the poor families. Political agitators took advantage of this situation to say poverty has all of a sudden increased which is not true otherwise why have had bursary funds all along.
There is need for the government to find ways and means of releasing funds from their various sources by November of each year so that the students that graduate to join grade 10 in January of the next year are identified and funded in good time. Alternatively, why can’t the government delay the enrolment of grade 10 to the first week of February each year in order to give time to parents and donors to sort out the financial requirements of these students? The three weeks lost in January can be recovered by reducing their Easter and August holidays. That is not difficult to sort out.
By Benjamin Sogomo
Education specialist/ Former secretary TSC
benjaminsogomo@gmail.com
