Basic Education Principal Secretary (PS) Belio Kipsang has assured parents and Kenyans that the government will ensure grade nine classrooms are completed before schools open in January next year.
Speaking at Meru County headquaters after supervising the opening of the KCSE examination container, Dr Kipsang said the government has already constructed 3,500 classrooms in phase-one while another 7500 are between 40 percent and 90 complete in phase-two which will be done by December 15 to bring the total classrooms to 11000.
In addition to the 11,000 classrooms, the PS added, MPs have a total of Sh6.8 billion that is supposed to be used for construction of some 7000 more classrooms to bring the total to 18,000 classrooms for grade nine.
“Our colleagues from the political side, the MPS, were given a conditional grant of Sh3.4 billion by the government and they were supposed to match this amount with another Sh3.4 billion from the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NGCDF) and build an additional 7000 classrooms to bring the total to 18,000,” said Dr Kipsang.
He added that the national government has also received Sh2 billion to be used to do another 2,000 classrooms assuring parents that there was no need to worry as all plans were on the schedule, and the government was in the course of implementing the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) Education.
Dr Kipsang further said that the government has also engaged some of its partners and acquired Sh2 billion which will be used to construct some 2,000 more classrooms.
“We know in January there might be one or two schools which may have missed out for one reason or the other and these 2,000 classrooms will handle any cases that may arise by then.
We are also not blind to the fact that sometimes people do migrate and parents change schools and therefore a school may receive additional learners in grade nine who were not there in grade eight so these are cases that we shall be able to handle as we move to January,” said Dr Kipsang.
By Dickson Mwiti
