The Government is in the process of coming up with a new education calendar plan that seeks to recover the lost 2020 education year ahead of the January full School reopening.
Education Cabinet Secretary Prof. George Magoha on Monday hinted that key stakeholders are in serious consultations to ensure a recovery plan is unveiled to avert learning crisis in the country.
“It’s true but it is premature, the process is ongoing. When we are ready we will come back, you know we really have to sit down and crack the nuts,” Magoha said in the wake of the learning crisis in the country.
Schools were closed on March 15, three weeks before the scheduled closing date, as part of efforts to slow down the spread of the Coronavirus. The government only allowed learners in Grade four, class eight and form four to reopen so they could prepare for examinations.
Magoha also downplayed teachers’ concerns that some learners from poor backgrounds still report to school without facemasks, putting the lives of teachers at risk of contracting Covid-19. He instead reiterated that head teachers should provide facemasks to poor learners reporting to school without them, adding that teachers also should assist needy students.
He emphasized that every learner must wear a mask as directed by President Uhuru Kenyatta, assuring that his Ministry was doing everything towards that end.
Magoha made the remarks in Mombasa on Monday on the sidelines of the Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI) meeting where he urged scientists to focus on research that would economically benefit the country.
“Research must now stop being a Kenyan issue, it must be inter inter-institutional and should be relevant and meaningful to the lives of our people,” he added.
The CS raised concern over how top cream researchers were being forced to retirement while their careers are at the peak, saying this has compromised the quality of research in the country. “We are actually damned as far as age is concerned, first of all we don’t have enough researchers and regrettably we are retiring the few excellent ones we have when they are at their peak,” he claimed.
He challenged Kenyan researchers to embark on post Covid-19 recovery research to help the government make informed decisions about economic recovery.
This year’s theme is “Response to Covid-19 pandemic, and infusion into post Covid-19 recovery strategies.”
By Joseph Kamolo
