Equip secondary schools to take in more Form One students

During their election campaigns, the Jubilee Party and the National Super Alliance pledged that they would provide free secondary education if they formed the next government. Now that Jubilee prevailed and its leader Uhuru Kenyatta has embarked on a second term, the government has the daunting task of making this pledge a reality.

However, there will be many obstacles that have to be surmounted. To capture the enormity of the task ahead, we will throw in some numbers the government must grapple with. To begin with, it must ensure that there is an adequate number of teachers in secondary schools to teach the 243,133 new Form One students, taking cognizance that some of the 993,718 learners who sat this year’s KCPE are ineligible for secondary education having scored below the 250 points pass mark. Conservative estimates indicate that 9,845 teachers will be required on top of the 75,000 that are already serving.

Once these tutors have been hired, they will need to be paid regularly and in conformity with the Collective Bargaining Agreements negotiated by unions to minimise the protracted strikes that disrupted learning for several months last year. Only time will tell if the Sh56 billion allocated for this expansion will be adequate. About 4,923 classrooms and other infrastructure will have to be built to ensure that the student-classroom ratio is met. Currently there are on average 65 students in a classroom that should seat 45, and this congestion has eroded the effectiveness of teaching, according a report on unrest in schools released last year.

During the budgetary process, policy wonks will come to the realisation that the cost of beakers, test tubes, petri-dishes and Bunsen burners (and the gas they will use) will be higher than the cost of constructing the mud-walled classrooms that dot the countryside. Our intention is not to paint a gloomy picture and say that the exercise of enrolling more students to secondary school is futile. It is to underscore that we have to be very focused to succeed. They say to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Therefore, let’s pull up our sleeves and get to work.