New committees to assist schools manage JSS cash

Capitation for Junior Secondary School (JSS) will be managed by a special sub-committee under the guidance of the primary school’s Board of Management.

Nyeri County Director of Education Sabina Aroni yesterday said that once registered, the respective primary schools hosting the JSS would be required to set up a sub-committee through which resources would be administered.

Aroni also explained that the change in management of funds for JSS was occasioned by an acknowledgement of Junior Secondary Schools as a distinct level.

“The guidelines which will be used to operationalise the Junior Secondary Schools have already been developed and publicised. The primary school’s Board of Management will be required to form a sub-committee that will deal with management of the Junior Secondary School. With time, the ministry will give guidelines on what will happen in future,” said Aroni.

She was speaking during an interview on the progress of the Rapid Result Initiative (RRI) aimed at assessing the capacity of primary and private secondary schools to host junior secondary.

The exercise is targeting 32,000 private and public schools countrywide, with 1,287,579 Grade Six students expected to join JSS. They are expected to report back to school on January 30, a week after others in primary and secondary schools.

Aroni said that by Tuesday, 109 out of the 500 private and public primary schools in the county had been assessed, adding that the exercise would be completed by next Wednesday to pave the way for registration of qualifying schools.

 “Apart from assessment of private and public primary schools to check their status and report their suitability to host JSS, the other major preparations include re-tooling of teachers who will handle students in junior secondary,” said Aroni.

 “As a legal obligation, schools that meet 75 per cent of the set requirements by the ministry will also be re-registered under the new 2-6-3-3 system of education. When we give certificates to schools, we state the system of education. At the moment, most of them are registered under the 8-4-4 system,” she added.

A total of 15,781 Grade Six students in Nyeri wrote their Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) in December 2022, out of which 13,100 are from public primary schools.

Aroni said that all 47 county directors of education, as well as education officials, are working to ensure a seamless 100 per cent transition of students from primary schools to JSS at the end of this month.

 Last year, the Kenya Primary Schools Heads Association (Kepsha) chairman, Johnson Nzioka, urged the Government to increase capitation to enable CBC implementation, now that junior secondary has been domiciled in primary schools.

More funds needed

With the rising cost of the economy and subsequent reforms being steered by the Ministry of Education, Nzioka said more funds should be injected to support public schools countrywide.

  He said education reforms, among them domiciling junior secondary school in primary, have come with a cost implication and will require additional resources.

 “The primary sector has been underfunded for many years. By the end of this conference, we are expecting to hear of increased funding,” said Nzioka.

At the same time, verification of documents for candidates who applied for the 35,550 vacant teaching position advertised by the Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC) will commence on Monday 16 in all the six sub-county offices in Nyeri.

According to Nyeri County TSC director Elijah Omwenga, all applicants will be expected to present their original certificates. The first lot of candidates to be verified on Monday next week will be those seeking to join the teaching workforce in public primary schools. The verification process for secondary school permanent and intern teachers is set to take place between January 17 and 19 at Kamwenja Teachers’ College in Mathari.

Omwenga said the county is expecting 667 new teachers during the mass recruitment, which he termed as the biggest in the history of teachers’ recruitment.

 He said that out of these, 21 teachers will be posted to primary schools on a permanent and pensionable basis while 85 will be hired as intern teachers for primary schools. After the recruitment, 396 intern teachers will be posted to secondary schools while TSC will hire 165 teachers on permanent and pensionable terms.

“The exercise will help alleviate the existing gaps and help us operate better. We may not reach the 100 per cent requirements of teacher-student ratio but it is an excellent step forward,” said Omwenga in an interview at the county TSC offices.

 Meanwhile,  Nyandarua KNUT branch secretary Johana Ndung’u says Grade Six level domiciled in primary school should not be called Junior Secondary School.  He called for the name to be changed to either intermediate-level or senior primary.

 Ndung’u said the name secondary should be preserved for secondary schools in the country.  “If we refer to Grade Six as Junior Secondary, the pupils will wonder  why they are being call so yet they are in primary school. This can affect them mentally and lower their esteem,” he said.

 The Knut branch secretary however praised the Presidential Working Party for recommending that the Grade Six level of education be domiciled in primary schools as it saved secondary school teachers from being overburdened with work.

 Ndung’u also commended the hiring of more teachers, saying it showed the State’s efforts to alleviate an a shortage in Kenya.  He said basing the recruitment on the number of years a teacher has been jobless after graduating was the best formula.

 “We in Knut are happy about the recruitment of new teachers, giving priority to those who have stayed out for long after graduating,” he said.

 He spoke in Ol Kalou at the weekend during the election of a Tower Sacco director representing Ol Kalou Zone.

Separately, Manyatta MP Gitonga Mukunji has appealed to the National Treasury to assist tertiary students who depend on the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) by releasing loans.

He said many students in universities and colleges were on a verge of dropping out due to cash challenges.  While speaking today during the verification of bursary applicants for colleges and University students of NG-CDF at Talent Academy in Embu Town

He called for a change in the laws governing the fund, saying the board should be given more powers to impose exorbitant fines on defaulters.  The first term MP promised to ensure transparency in the allocation of the bursaries.

Reports by David Macharia, Brian Malila and KNA