Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i has announced a raft of new changes affecting secondary schools across the country.
Matiang’i has said that national secondary schools will now be allowed to have day students.
playCabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i during the Outernet launch at Jomo Kenyatta High School. (Nation Media Group)
The CS further directed the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to start the rationalisation of teachers countrywide.
Already, Matiang'i has said that all students countrywide will get personal identification numbers by the end of this month.
According to the CS, the National Education Management Information System (EMIS) for which a national launch is set for this month is a management tool that will be a source of accurate, reliable and timely education data.
playKakoneni Girls secondary school Principal Mary Bandika with Education CS Fred Matiangi and mining CS Dan Kazungu interact with students of Kakoneni girls high school in Malindi sub county on June 12 during a tour of the school. (The Star)
The directive comes a few weeks after a special investigation team appointed by Matiang’i and headed by Clare Omolo proposed that boarding schools which do not meet the minimum basic standards be converted into day schools.
The report also proposed that the government invest heavily in day schools to attract more students.
Data from the Ministry of Education shows that there are 8,592 public secondary schools.
Nearly half of these are either full boarding schools or have a boarding section.
These schools have an enrollment of about 2.5 million students.
The radical proposals come in the wake of last year's unrest in schools that left 239 dormitories destroyed.
Last year alone, 483 cases of student unrest were reported.
Of these, 429 were reported during the second term, with more than half the cases being arson.
