Principal Secretary (PS) State Department of Basic Education Dr. Belio Kipsang has said that the government will embark on a validation and verification of data exercise to profile all 23,000 public schools in the country to measure their capacities to host junior secondary schools.
He noted that it was paramount that all head teachers capture all requisite information pertaining to their schools in the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS). He added that all transactions going forward will be NEMIS based so as to have a centralized structure to address any concerns or issues with regard to each school.
“We shall only have one source of truth which will be NEMIS. All our activities including sending capitation, sending books and as the Ministry addresses concerns forwarded by the school heads, NEMIS will be at the center of it.” said Kipsang.
The PS was speaking when he officially opened the 18th Kenya Primary Schools Head Association (KEPSHA) annual meeting in Mombasa where primary school heads from all 47 counties have congregated for the five day conference.
Categorization of schools is one of the critical areas the presidential working party on education will be keenly looking into with a view of determining its usefulness and impact. Kipsang noted that primary schools are not categorized into any cadre hence the need to come up with a conclusive overview of issues surrounding the same.
“Some schools are categorized as county schools, sub-county schools and some as National schools. The presidential working party on Education is reviewing this with the aim of seeing if this categorization is necessary,” said Kipsang.
On his part, the Teachers Service Commission Chairperson Dr. Jamleck Muturi lauded the government on its promise to employ 30,000 teachers come January to address the shortage faced across the country.
He noted that his commission had a shortage of at least 166,000 teachers and the recruitment of the new teaching staff will be a great boost not only to the commission but also to the government in its strides to implement the National Education agenda.
“The commission has already put in place the necessary systems and in the next two weeks we will have advertised those posts in order to align ourselves with the President’s directive,” said Muturi.
Muturi also noted that the commission will ensure the distribution of the teachers will be equitable countrywide. With the re-tooling of 229,000 primary school teachers and 60,000 secondary school teachers, Muturi said these were some of the efforts made to implement and deliver the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC).
“This is not a one-off exercise, it is a continuous exercise which will also engage the Ministry to ensure that we work together to have a seamless flow in terms of delivery of curriculum,” added Muturi.
By Andrew Hinga and Fatuma Said
