Education Cabinet Secretary Prof. George Magoha has advised private schools to comply with the standards set out for Junior secondary schools in order to be allowed to admit students.
Magoha said one of the basic standards is a well-equipped Laboratory. “If you don’t have a lab, you have no business offering junior secondary school,” he noted.
The CS said majority of schools in Nairobi and Mombasa have already met the standards as the government targets 20, 000 spaces from the private schools to absorb between 2000 to 3000 students.
“You know that in Kenya now, the middle class is large enough so we need private schools to provide enough spaces to accommodate our children,” he noted.
Speaking in Kakamega after commissioning Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) classrooms at Mukumu Girls and Kakamega High, Magoha said out of the contracted 10000 CBC classrooms, 9600 have been completed.
“We are almost there, we have about 400 classrooms to do, which will be completed in two days, because the majority of them are at roofing level,” he noted.
The CS said private schools which have complied with the required standards have been added to the Ministry of Education portal for children who wish to join to select. At the same time, parents can physically visit the schools which are missing on the portal and enroll their children.
“Parents can still visit the schools which are not in the portal and enroll. This is a temporary measure, once everything is in line, private schools will manage their own affairs as they have always done in the past,” he noted.
At the same time, Magoha reminded parents who wish to enroll their children to private schools that they will still pay school fees.
“We are not worried about private schools, the only thing parents must know is that if you decide that your child is going to a private school then you must know there is a fee to be paid there,” he disclosed.
The CS said Kakamega and Bungoma counties are important to the Ministry of Education due to their large number of children.
He lauded teams from the National Government Administration Officers (NGAO) and the Ministry of Education for working together to complete the classrooms in time.
“I have seen the energy by teams from both the Ministry of Education and NGAO as well as my own staff and I am confident that they will deliver within two days,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, Central Region was the first to complete the CBC classrooms followed by North Eastern, Nyanza and according to the CS, Eastern Region will soon complete the classrooms, while Western Region’s completion rate stands at 93 percent.
By Moses Wekesa and Anne Otieno
