By Education News reporter
Parents with children in boarding schools will now be forced to dig deeper into their pockets to finance their children’s education as government issues new fee guidelines that has increased it by over 5,000 shillings, bringing an end to subsidised fees which started in 2021.
This was revealed in the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) circular on the implementation of Free Day Secondary Education (FDSE) for the year 2023 dated November 15, 2022 signed by the outgoing basic education Principal Secretary (PS) Dr. Julius Jwan.
This is after the school calendar reverted to the normal 39 weeks from the 30 necessitated by the Covid-19 disruptions of 2020 when learning was put off for close to a year.
In the new guidelines, national and extra county schools in Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, Kisumu, Nyeri, Thika and Eldoret, which form Category ‘A’ of boarding schools, will from January 2023 charge Ksh53,554 per year, up from Ksh45,000 which they have been paying since the 2021 school calendar.
Those in boarding and extra county schools located outside the listed major urban centres to form Category ‘B’ will now pay Ksh40,535 per year from the current Ksh35,000.
However, the government will continue providing a subsidy for each learner in a boarding school that is equal to the subsidy for each learner in a day school, which is Ksh22,244.
This will include tuition (teaching, learning materials and exams), which has been allocated Ksh4,144, medical and insurance (Ksh2,000), activity (Ksh1,500), and Strengthening of Mathematics and Science in Secondary Education’s (SMASSE) Ksh200.
Other vote heads, including local travel and transport, administrative costs, electricity, water and conservancy, and personnel emolument is allocated a total of Ksh9,400, as maintenance and improvement gets Ksh5,000.
Break down
Parents with their children in all national and extra county schools located in the said urban centres will in January 2023 pay a boarding equipment and stores fee of Ksh30,385 up from Ksh24,935, which they have been paying for the last two years since 2021. They will also pay a total of Ksh20,371 as other vote-heads, up from Ksh17,267 annually.
Those with children in boarding and extra county schools outside these urban centres will pay Ksh25,385 for boarding equipment and stores, up from Ksh20,830. Other vote-heads will be Ksh12,900 up from Ksh11,670 per year.
For special needs schools (SNEs), the government will provide an enhanced capitation of Ksh57,974 per learner.
The total government subsidy in boarding SNEs per learner annually will include: tuition (Ksh4,144), boarding equipment and stores (Ksh23,220), maintenance and improvement (Ksh5,000), other vote heads (Ksh9,400) activity fees (Ksh1,500), medical and insurance (Ksh2,000), top-up grant (Ksh 12,510), and SMASSE (Ksh 200).
The top-up grant per learner is normally used to procure assistive devices and any additional personnel needed.
In order to meet the cost of boarding as well as maintenance and improvement, parents in these schools will pay boarding fees of Ksh12,790 annually, up from the Ksh10,860 they have been paying since 2021.
The enrollment data to be used for provision of the government subsidy will be obtained from National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) on diverse dates from December 15, 2022, March 31, 2023, to June 30, 2023.
2023 school calendar
The normal January-December school calendar is expected to resume from January 2023 after it was disrupted by Covid-19 in March 2020.
In the ministry’s circular dated November 7, 2022, all pre-primary, primary and secondary schools will open on January 23, 2023 for their 13-week term, to run up to April 21, 2023.
There will be a half-term break between March 23, 2023 and March 26, 2023.
Second term will kick off on May 8, 2023 to run up to August 11, 2023 with a three-day half-term break starting from June 29, 2023 to July 2, 2023, before proceeding for another two-week holiday from August 12, 2023 to August 27, 2023.
Schools will then open for the 10 weeks of third term between August 28, 2023 and November 3, 2023 to pave way for the four-day 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) from November 6, 2023 to November 9, 2023, and the 3-week Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) from November 10, 2023 to December 1, 2023.
According to Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) Taskforce data of 2020, there are a total of 9,077 public secondary schools in the country, which comprise of 112 national schools (52 boys, 55 girls and 5 mixed), and 776 extra county schools (361 boys, 349 girls and 66 mixed).
There are also 1,378 county schools (353 boys, 516 girls and 509 mixed) and 6,776 sub-county schools (167 boys, 312 girls and 6,297 mixed).
