Senior Ministry of Education officials in Nyeri have teamed up National Government Administrative Officers to ensure that the remaining three percent of learners who are yet to report to secondary school join Form One before Friday this week.
According to Jane Njogu, the County Director of Education, out of the over 16,000 who sat the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Schools (KCPE) in 2023 in the county, an estimated 1,000 learners are yet to take up form one.
“Nyeri is at over 90 per cent. By the end of this week we will have completed the mop-up exercise,” she said.
During the mop-up exercise, Njogu together with the Nyeri Central Assistant County Commissioner and chiefs facilitated the registration of more than 25 learners from the Nyeri Central sub-county.
The Director said that a similar exercise was taking place in the remaining seven sub-counties to ensure that 16,470 transitions to secondary school.
She noted that a majority of the learners would be joining nearby Day Secondary schools to ensure that they do not lag far behind their counterparts who joined secondary schools on January 15.
“I know some of the learners will be disappointed for not being able to join the school of their choice. But if they are not able to join the school where you were invited, we are encouraging them to join Day Secondary schools instead of staying at home. This is because the government foots full tuition fees for the day schools. The only thing that the government does not cater for is lunch,” she said.
On the issue of uniforms, the director reiterated the Ministry’s directive allowing learners who cannot afford new school uniforms to continue donning their primary school ones until such a time when their parents can afford the new set.
“There is no way a child is going to be denied a chance to learn because of lack of uniform. We have asked principals to allow the students to learn with old uniform until they acquire the requisite uniform,” said Njogu.
As of Friday last week, about 131,854 learners who were expected to transition to Form One this year were yet to report to secondary schools.
Data from the Ministry of Education shows that 1,268,185 out of 1.4 million who sat the 2023 KCPE, had reported to various categories of schools as at January 26. Out of the 701,066 boys selected to join secondary schools, 642,396 had been admitted while 693,378 girls who were selected to secondary school, 625,789 have been admitted.
The report showed that Kakamega, Laikipia, and Mombasa counties had recorded the highest number of students who have reported to secondary school at 99 percent each.
On the other hand, Kajiado had the lowest number of secondary school transitions at 64 percent. Others that recorded low form one transition were Narok at 72 percent, Isiolo at 77 percent, and Kilifi with 79 percent transition to secondary school.
By Wangari Mwangi and Molly Kendi
