As the government continues to implement construction of Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) classrooms in public secondary schools across the country, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has urged private secondary school owners to start investing in new classrooms to also accommodate Junior Secondary School students.
Out of the 6,497 classrooms that the government is putting up in the first phase, 2,000 of them have been completed and 350 already commissioned by the ministry officials.
Magoha who spoke at Mang’u High School in Juja, Kiambu County where he commissioned two CBC classrooms revealed that Garissa was leading with 99 percent closely followed by Mandera, Wajir and Meru at 94, 90 and 87 percent respectively.
To ensure that all students who will be transitioning to junior high schools are fully accommodated, Magoha at the same time encouraged private primary schools interested in putting up standalone junior secondary schools to take advantage of the ongoing exercise promising full government support.
He assured all contractors doing CBC classrooms construction of prompt payment upon completion of the works warning that no contractor should be charged or the processing of their documents delayed.
Meanwhile, the CS upheld that the national exams set to commence between March 7 will be fully credible warning those anybody planning to cheat in the examination process that they will be handled in accordance with the full force of the law.
He said that the exams were set by Kenyan teachers who considered the lost academic calendar precipitated by Covid-19.
In volatile areas such as Wajir and Baringo, Magoha said the government has beefed up security and prepared enough planes to fly the exams to all areas to avoid delays.
The CS called on education and security officials across the country to exercise vigilance during the administration of national exams to guard against leakages and any form of examination malpractices.
A total of 1,225,507 candidates in 28,316 KCPE examination centers are set to sit the 2021 exams as compared to 1,191,752 candidates in 28,467 centers who sat the exams in 2020.
In regards to the KCSE examination, 831,015 candidates were registered in 10,413 centers compared to 752,981 in 10,437 centers in 2020 representing a candidature increase of 78,034 (9.39) per cent.