Capitation for the Junior Secondary School (JSS) will be managed by a special sub-committee which will operate under the guidance of the primary school’s Board of Management.
Nyeri County Director of Education, Sabina Aroni, has said that as such once registered, the respective primary schools hosting the JSS will then be required to set up a sub-committee through which the resources will be administered.
She noted that the change in the management of funds for JSS was occasioned by the acknowledgement of Junior Secondary Schools as a distinct level of education.
“The guidelines which will be used to operationalize the Junior Secondary School have already been developed and publicized. The primary school’s Board of Management will now be required to form a JSS sub-committee which will deal with the management of the junior secondary school. But with time, the ministry will give guidelines on what will happen in future,” said Ms Aroni.
Ms Aroni was speaking during an interview with KNA as the county entered day three of the Rapid Result Initiative (RRI) aimed at assessing the capacity of primary and private secondary schools to host junior secondary. The exercise is targeting 32,000 private and public primary schools countrywide where the 1,287,579 Grade Six students will be domiciled under JSS.
Ms Aroni said that by Tuesday,109 out of the 500 private and public primary schools in the county had been assessed, adding that the exercise will be complete by Wednesday next week to pave way for the registration of the qualifying schools.
“Apart from the assessment of private and public primary schools to check their status and report their suitability to host JSS, the other major preparations that are going on is the re-tooling of the teachers who are supposed to handle the students in the junior secondary,” said Aroni.
“As a legal obligation, schools that meet 75 per cent of the set requirements by the ministry will also be re-registered under the new 2-6-3-3 system of education. When we give certificates to schools we state the system of education and at the moment most of them are registered under the 8-4-4 system,” she added.
The country’s first ever lot of Grade 7 students who wrote their Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) last year are expected to join JSS on January 30. A total of 15,781 Grade Six students in Nyeri wrote their KPSEA in December 2022.Out of these 13,100 are from public primary schools.
Ms Aroni has said that all 47 county directors of education as well as education officials were working to ensure that all is set for a seamless 100 per cent transition of the students from Primary Schools to the JSS come the end of this month.
At the same time, the verification of documents for candidates who applied for the 35,550 vacant teaching position advertised by the Teacher’s Service Commission(TSC) will commence on Monday 16, in all the six sub-county offices in Nyeri.
According to Nyeri County TSC Director, Elijah Omwenga, all applicants will be expected to present their original certificates during the process. The first lot of candidates to be verified on Monday next week will be those seeking to join the teaching workforce in public primary schools. The verification process for secondary school permanent and intern teachers is set to take place between January 17 and January 19 at the Kamwenja Teachers’ College in Mathari.
Mr Omwenga said that the county is expecting 667 new teachers during the mass recruitment which he termed as the biggest in the history of teachers’ recruitment exercise.
Omwenga said that out of these, 21 teachers will be posted in primary schools on a permanent and pensionable basis while 85 will be hired as intern teachers for primary schools. After the recruitment, 396 intern teachers will be posted in secondary schools while TSC will hire 165 teachers on permanent and pensionable terms.
“The exercise is a very good boost for us as a county as it will go a long way in alleviating the existing gaps as it will make us operate better. We may not reach the 100 per cent requirements of teacher- student ratio but it is an excellent step forward,” said Omwenga in an interview at the County TSC offices.
By Wangari Mwangi and Samuel Maina
