6,500 schools shut in one year

More than 6,500 primary and secondary schools were de-registered in the last one year for failing to comply with Ministry of Education requirements. Most of them are private schools with some 4,837 facilities shut.

Another 1,665 public primary schools were closed down, according to the Economic Survey data released this week.

Overall, the total number of education institutions – pre-primary, primary, secondary – declined to 89,337 last year up from 91,626, representing a reduction of 2.5 per cent.

During the same period, the report says the number of primary and secondary schools reduced by 14.7 per cent and 8.2 per cent to 32,344 and 10,463, respectively.

“The reduction is partly due to intensified inspection by the Ministry of Education that led to closure of schools that did not meet requirements,” reads the report.

However, according to the data, the number of pre-primary schools increased to 46,530 last year, from 42,317 before that. This was attributed to the policy change that requires every primary school to have an Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) Centre.

In 2019 enrollment in pre-primary 1 and 2 was 2.7 million, of which 1.3 million were girls.

Trained female and male ECDE teachers for pre-primary 1 and 2 last year was 77,725 and 14,634 respectively. Total enrollment in primary schools dropped by 500,000, representing a 4.5 per cent decline.

Transition policy

Only 10 million pupils were enrolled in primary schools last year, compared to 10.5 million in 2018. Enrollment in Grade 1 stood at 1.2 million in 2019, out of which more than 600,000 were boys.

Enrollment of girls in Standard Eight went up by 9.2 per cent to 549,000 in 2019 while that of boys increased by five per cent to 529,000 in 2019.

Enrollment in public and private secondary schools increased to 3.3 million last year from 2.9 million in 2018.

Enrollment in Form One was 861,000 in 2019, an increase of 4.3 per cent from 826,000 in 2018. This was attributed to the government policy of 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary schools.

The number of teacher training colleges dropped from 406 in 2018 to 384 last year. Most were private primary teachers' training colleges. The number of TVETs grew by 10.3 per cent to 2,191 in 2019.