Expel rogue students, Magoha tells school heads

Renegade learners who want to disrupt learning in schools should be identified and allowed to go home, Education CS George Magoha has said.

He also said school opening dates remain as was earlier announced.

Schools will reopen on January 3.

Magoha on Monday said it is unfair for the whole school to suffer because of a few individuals who are either tired or afraid of staying in school.

“If there is a child who does not want to go to school and he wants to go and rest with his parents, to take exams from home, let him go rather than harming the infrastructure,” Magoha instructed school heads.

He spoke after breaking ground for two classrooms for junior secondary school at the Mombasa Secondary School for the Physically Handicapped in Nyali sub-county and a tour of the new Mama Ngina Girls national school in Kisauni sub-county.

His statement came as over 10,000 primary school headteachers began their three-day 17th annual delegates conference on Tuesday at the Sheikh Zayed Hall in Mombasa.

The conference, according to Kepsha chairman Johnson Nzioka, will among other things take stock of the Competence-Based Curriculum and assess its success and failures while trying to improve its implementation.

Nzioka said this year’s meet will focus on issues of school managers’ leadership in relation to the crisis.

It comes right after a myriad of challenges where a wave of school unrest has been witnessed in various schools across the country.

“Effective leadership in schools is a catalyst to better learning. Headteachers need effective management skills to be able to shoulder the immense responsibilities of running schools,” Nzioka.

He spoke at Sheikh Zayed Hall in Bombolulu ahead of the official opening of the ADC by CS Magoha on Tuesday.

Magoha, at Mama Ngina Girls national school construction site, said the school opening dates remain as was earlier announced and no parent should fail to take their child to school because of money issues.

“Primary school is 100 per cent free in public school. I ordered last year that any child who goes to school without uniform should not be sent home. So primary school is sorted,” said Magoha.

He said 75 per cent of secondary schools are day schools and there is free day secondary school where the government pays over Sh24,400 per child.

“That takes care of everything. As books are given to children in primary schools, books are also given to children in secondary schools. So all day secondary school children have nothing to pay,” said Magoha.

The ministry, he said, will be extra vigilant to avoid the destruction of property in schools, in conjunction with the Interior Ministry, and will also ensure that all children who want to learn are in school.

He said generally, learners are good, bad there are always a few bad apples.

“As the media and everybody else focuses on 0.1 per cent of schools and learners who are renegade and do bad things, we tend to forget about the large majority of teachers and learners who are very happy to continue with their learning and are going forward,” said Magoha.

This is why the ministry will allow the renegade children who want to go home and rest to do so.

“It is actually ridiculous for a child, where there are 2,000 children, because you don’t want to read, because you take drugs, because you are a homosexual or what-have-you or a lesbian, because you want everybody else to suffer, therefore you burn the school so that everybody suffers by the school being closed and time lost,” said Magoha.

“The children are ours and let us not be afraid to check them.”

The CS assured that there will be 5,200 new classrooms for the junior secondary schools by April next year, which will mark the end of Phase 1 of President Uhuru’s 10,000 junior secondary school classrooms promise.

The 10,000 classrooms will be constructed at a cost of Sh8 billion.

“We have already mapped out all schools and they are on GIS, therefore we know where the gap is,” said Magoha.

He said while some schools have surplus classrooms that will suffice for junior secondary school, some have adequate classrooms and will need one or two additional classrooms, and others require the whole complement of the streams of junior secondary schools.

“(The end of Phase 1) will give us time to mobilise and start Phase 2 so that by the end of the year, when we start in 2023, all our children will have enough classrooms to be in,” said the CS.

The CBC, Magoha noted, is in very good stead and the Kenya National Examination Council has done an assessment for Grades 3, 4 and 5.

Next year, when Grade 6 will be there, there will be an additional assessment for them and another summative one, after which the children will be graded.

He said the ministry must continue to work towards preparing the learners for the future even with the matter still in court.

“The government has ensured that all the children, contrary to propaganda and toxic politics we find from a few people that CBC is not working is expensive, have text books availed to them,” said Magoha.

He said from 2018, when the government started issuing text books to schools, over Sh28.5 billion has been used, with the government having saved 70 per cent of funds.

“We are going to ensure that by the time we go to Grade 6 in April next year, the Grade 6 text books, which are currently being printed, will have been distributed to all the children,” the CS said.

In 2022, there will be five examinations that will be administered to learners.

These include the two normal ones in March, then the KCPE, the KCSE and Grade 6 exam which will be responsible for only 40 per cent, in December.

Magoha said all the five exams will be ready to be administered by the end of February 2022, even after the President and his Cabinet leave office.

The CS said the CBC, which is learner-centred, is bringing back Kenyan children and there is more engagement between the child and the parent now.