I sent the following message to a senior technocrat in the Ministry of Education.
Elite secondary schools have always admitted students beyond those initially allocated to them during Form I admissions. But they never admitted students to the extent of affecting enrollment of students in Subcounty Schools.
What could have happened during grade 10 admissions?
Below was his reply: “The big schools had too much space. They stole from the small schools. Remember, we have only 3 classes in senior year. Used to be 4.”
“The C4 schools will die.”
C1 and C2 (formerly National and Extra County) schools admitted more grade 10 learners than they did before under the 8.4.4 system of education.
A significant number of the students’ schools admitted should have been admitted into C3 (formerly County) schools. Denied the opportunity to admit them, C3 schools admitted some students; C4 (formerly Subcounty) schools should have admitted.
The net effect of the additional students C1 and C2 schools admitted was that they denied C4 schools the opportunity to admit the necessary proportion of students they have annually admitted under the 8.4.4 system of education.
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The Principal Secretary for Basic Education, Prof. Julius Bittok clarified that the government allowed big schools to admit more learners than the stipulated maximum after they requested the authorities in the Ministry to do so. He made the clarification on the Elimu Mashinani program, a talk show on a local Television.
The PS said that although the government allowed them to admit a further 5per percent, some schools went overboard by admitting 10percent additional students.
I was happy to learn that the Ministry of Education will not allow the schools carte blanche to admit the next cohort of grade 10.
Let’s do the arithmetic. An elite school with a stipulated ceiling of 700 students in grade 10, would have admitted an additional 35 students under the 5percent the authorities permitted. But having admitted 10percent more than permitted, it admitted 70 students more.
This is when some C4 schools were registering less than 20 students in grade 10, in a double-streamed school.
Why did this happen? Why did C1 and C2 schools admit more students than stipulated? We now have only 3 classes in senior school under CBE. It used to be 4 classes under the 8.4.4 system of education.
They admitted more students than stipulated because the schools now have three as opposed to four cohorts of students. Talk of taking the lion’s share of grade 10 learners.
The Competence-based system of education now provides that the senior school system will be three years. The senior (formerly secondary) schools’ system was four years.
Three years of senior school means that schools which had for example, an average of 300 students in each class, under 8.4.4, had a student population of 1200 spanning four years. With one year lopped off, and domiciled in Junior School (read grade 9), the school has 300 fewer.
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What does this mean? Loss of revenue stream from the government and households.
It means the school has lost 6,673,200 in capitation if the government sent the stipulated Kshs.22.244 per learner or Kshs. 4,800,000, because of the fiscal pressure on the exchequer, under the Free Day Secondary Education (FDSE.
The students in our hypothetical elite school pay a stipulated sum of KShs.53,000 per student in boarding. The school has lost a total of Kshs15,900,000 in revenues from parents’ boarding fees.
The total amount of money the school has lost is about Kshs.23M (under the 22,44 capitation) or about Kshs. 16M (under the Kshs 16,00 capitation) by the reduction of four-year secondary education under the 8.4.4 system of education to three years of senior school.
Our hypothetical school lost a similar amount of money last year, given that there was no Form I last year because there was no Form I.
Clearly, the request of the C1 and C2 schools to the authorities at Jogoo House was to fill the entire classrooms left vacant by the absence of Form II and recoup the lost revenue. They were not doing charity to their parents.
By serving parents, they were serving their own needs, to the detriment of C4 schools, Iago style in William Shakespeare’s play, Othello.
In regaining the student body lost under the three-year senior school system, the principal of our hypothetical school ignored the following.
First, additional students beyond the stipulated ceiling means large school sizes and large classrooms. The pushing of so many students into CI, C2 and C3 schools is inconsistent with the principles underlying CBC.
The pedagogical principle in CBE is learner-centeredness. A school is about quality teaching and learning. Individual learners are the focus of a teacher’s attention for more time. It provides for more active interaction between pupils and teachers, and more pupil engagement. That is the DNA of CBE. Big school size and, by implication, large class size, undermine this.
Second, additional enrollment undermined the basis of C4 schools in our educational establishment. The schools are legally registered institutions. They provide and have the potential to deliver a great education to learners.
The schools need to be supported and protected. They should let elite schools, like Nile Perch does to small fish, swallow them.
Thirdly, C4 schools are the next frontier for the expansion of secondary education. They are community schools. We should progressively deemphasise the boarding secondary system by investing in subcounty schools and making secondary education affordable across the country.
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We cannot continue directing learners to C1 and C2 schools whose classrooms, hostels, libraries, and ablution blocks are bursting at the seams. The layout of the school should support teaching and learning—classrooms, hostels, libraries, and ablution blocks.
The government should expand and make C4 schools, and make them attractive. It can do this by putting up state-of-the-art storied classrooms, laboratories, and libraries. Equip the labs, stock the libraries with books and not textbooks, as it has become the norm in all schools, and employ trained librarians. Expand the curriculum to include academic and vocational disciplines, including foreign languages, fine arts and music, drawing and design. Deploy adequate staff in all these disciplines.
Then, parents and students will stop dying for the C1 and C2 schools.
The government should not kill C4 Schools.
I don’t know of any other strategy of spreading equal educational opportunities for all children other than giving equitable support in finance, material and staffing to C3 and C4 schools as that given to C1 and C2 schools.
By Kennedy Buhere
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