The Ministry of Education is recommending sharing of teachers among schools to deal with the shortage of technical subject tutors.
If this proposal is adopted, selected teachers will offer their services in multiple schools, as guided by the Teachers Service Commission.
Curriculum Reforms and Implementation PS Fatuma Chege said optional subjects being offered in junior secondary might take some time to have enough teachers.
“We can think of engaging roving teachers by rationalising available ones, identifying which teacher can teach what subject,” Chege said.
Chege, a former high school teacher, spoke during the Catholic schools principals’ conference.
The PS gave an example of when she was a student at St George's and they would share their French teacher with other schools.
“What used to happen is our French teacher would come to school once and have a session with all the classes on Monday and from there, she would teach other schools,” she said.
While teaching music in high school, Chege would also teach in several schools across the week because she had few lessons in her main school.
Chege urged school principals to avail the list of subjects they can offer in junior secondary school.
This, she said, would allow students to select from a variety of subjects, while being placed in their respective institutions.
“The minimum optional subjects you can offer as a school is three. There are some schools that have already elected the subjects because of available infrastructure,” Chege said.
Due to the double intake of CBC learners and 2022 Form 1 students, the PS urged the principals to avoid demarcating the groups.
Chege said most schools have secluded CBC classrooms in one part of the school, away from the other classrooms.
“You find one block of classrooms in a school and when you ask about CBC classrooms, you are shown some structure in some bush,” she said.
The PS said this infrastructure ‘bias’ should not be extended to the learners in different curricula.
“As a school, you should receive the kids as secondary learners despite their age to avoid the conceptual problem,” she said.
The optional subjects are visual arts, performing arts, home science, computer science, Kenyan sign language and indigenous languages.
Foreign languages to be offered are French, German, Mandarin and Arabic.
According to the Basic Education Curriculum Framework, learners are expected to choose a minimum of one and a maximum of two subjects.
The pioneer cohort of CBC, currently in Grade 6, is expected to join junior secondary next year.
According to the ministry, 2.57 million students will be enrolled for Grade 7 and Form 1 during the double intake in January.
Edited by A.N
