Magoha sets deadline for classrooms
Contractors building the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) classrooms are expected to have completed all the work by March 7, when the national examinations will be commencing.
Education Cabinet Secretary, Prof George Magoha yesterday issued the ultimatum saying though the target was the end of this month, they have a grace period of seven more days to hand over the project.
“In terms of the target of completion, it is the end of this month with a standard deviation of another seven days to March 1 – 7. Come March 7, we do not want contractors in our schools because we do not trust people with our children when they are doing their exams,” said Magoha.
He made the remarks yesterday after inspecting a CBC classroom at Parklands Arya Girls Secondary School in Nairobi. “We are still hopeful that we will meet this target even though there are some challenging areas like Baringo and Lamu but overall, we are at about 66 per cent completion and this is something we will be able to do.”
Despite the huge population in Nairobi ahead of other areas, Magoha said only 78 public schools will benefit from this CBC classroom construction programme.
“I have been told why they have been slow in the past, it is because they thought that somehow the money to construct classrooms will be increased,” said Magoha.
But Magoha explained the reason why money will not be increased upwards is that the figure Sh788,000 was well informed and included the profits for the vendor which the Government is directly paying through MPesa with a special arrangement.
“We have confirmed only a few days ago when I was in Bungoma DEB Primary school, the third largest with over 3,000 students, that the money we gave them, Sh2 million as infrastructure money was used to construct three classrooms. Many teachers do not divert money into their pockets. Why I am giving this as an example is that we will not listen to anyone, even the MP in that area had given Sh5.6 million and constructed about nine classrooms,” he said.
Costing capped
He said that the Sh1.2 million being quoted by some contractors will not be adopted, noting that those not comfortable with Sh788,000 should step aside to allow those interested to do the job. “We can always get others, there are so many other people who can build. The project was not meant for the big contractors but for small ones,” he explained.
He however said that the project has generally been progressing well, with the best region so far being the Northern part of the country, with a completion rate at 93 per cent in Garissa, followed by Mandera at 81 per cent and Wajir at 77 per cent.
“This is encouraging because we thought it is the area that would have been a problem. Nyanza is also doing well, all the counties there have done well. The best performing area where 43 classrooms have already been received in Siaya out of the about 200 that are to be built,” Magoha said.
Construction of the first phase of the school infrastructure development programme commenced in November following the release of Sh4 billion.
The Sh4 billion, in addition to Sh1.2 billion from the Ministry of Education’s infrastructure fund, will be spent on the construction of 6,500 classrooms in 6,371 secondary schools across the country.
The programme is meant to address the classroom deficit in public secondary schools to allow for a smooth transition of CBC Grade 6 learners to Junior Secondary in January 2023.
“I assure the country that through this programme, the Government is on course to progressively expand the capacities of all our secondary schools to support the 100 per cent transition policy and accommodate more learners in 2023 when the CBC Grade 6 candidates of 2022 will transit to Junior Secondary School,” the CS said. The programme is being implemented in two phases.
