- Some 1.5 million learners, who are currently in Grade Five, will be transiting to Grade Six in May and will be joining junior secondary school in January.
- President Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to officially open the one-week conference at Sheikh Zayed Hall in Mombasa.
President Uhuru Kenyatta is on Wednesday this week expected to officially open the 45th Kenya Secondary School Heads Association annual national conference in Mombasa.
This will be Uhuru’s last meeting with the secondary school heads as he prepares to exit office after the August 9 general election.
The over 10,000 secondary school heads, who will be meeting at the Sheikh Zayed Hall in Mombasa, are expected to discuss preparation to host the junior secondary school under the Competence-Based Curriculum.
Some 1.5 million learners, who are currently in Grade 5, will be transiting to Grade 6 in May. They are expected to sit for their national examinations in November and join junior secondary schools in January next year.
The national government is also putting up additional 10,000 classrooms for the junior secondary schools, which are being built with the secondary schools.
The government is also training over 60,000 secondary school teachers on CBC ahead of the junior secondary roll-out next year.
Other issues to be discussed during the Mombasa meeting include funding in public secondary schools, mental health challenges among teachers, and the secondary school students’ unrest that rocked the nation last year.
The heads will also discuss how to continue keeping schools safer from Covid-19.
This is the first physical meeting since 2019 after the 2020 meeting was cancelled due to the outbreak of Covid-19 in March 2020.
This year’s meeting comes just a week before the schools re-open for the first term on April 25.
The Class 8 candidates, who received their KCPE exam results on March 28, are also expected to join Form 1 from May 3.
This year’s conference whose theme is, “Re-Examining our future together; a new era of education in Kenya,” was scheduled for April 4 through to April 8.
However, it was postponed as some teachers were engaged in the marking of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary School examination, which started on April 4 and concluded on April 15.
Education ministry Cabinet Secretary George Magoha is expected to release the 2021 KCSE exam results next week.
The conference, which is being sponsored by the Kenya Commercial Bank, will also bring together stakeholders in the education sector; Teachers Service Commission officials, teachers' unions and officials from parents’ associations.
On Monday, the Kessha national chairperson Indimuli Kahi is expected to issue a detailed statement on this year’s conference, which comes at a time teachers are struggling with the implementation of CBC.
According to the tentative programme, Kenya National Examination Council CEO Dr David Njegere will address the issue of Competency-Based Assessment at the secondary level.
Prof Stephen Odebero, the Educational Planning and Director at the Directorate of Postgraduate Studies, will address the issue of funding of public secondary education and protecting the education budget.
Paul Kibet, the director of secondary and tertiary education at the Ministry of Education, will address the contemporary issues in education.
Dr Frank Njenga, the chairman of Chiromo Hospital Group and James Ngunjiri the managing director of Heri Healthcare Consulting, will address the issue of mental health among the principals.
-Edited by SKanyara