The hurried and discriminative choice of primary schools to host junior secondary classes represents a monumental breach of children's right to education.
The haphazard choice of a few schools to host senior competency-based curriculum classes, and others to 'feed' them, undermines universal access to education.
In education parlance, access refers to the ways policies strive to ensure that pupils have equal and equitable opportunities of enjoying an enabling learning environment.
Distance from the child's home to the school, especially for day facilities, is key to the definition of access. Selecting some schools to host junior secondary classes, and classifying others as 'feeder' institutions, is a breach of the right to education.
The chosen schools have no teachers. They have not received books, or any direction for junior secondary classes. Parents from the so-called feeder schools are stranded with their children.
The indecisive official decision would have been comical if it weren't a tragic commentary on the muddled transition, from the maligned 8:4:4 system to the so-named competency-based curriculum. CBC is starting out on the wrong-footing.
A system that seeks to inculcate competence does not seem to be anchored on rational decisions. Public money was disbursed to secondary schools to build two new CBC classrooms.
Those facilities in secondary schools won't serve the intended purpose in real time. At least not until CBC finds a planned and logical home. When this would be is indefinite.
The official assault on the future of children may lead to high school push-outs, low enrolment, early marriage, teenage pregnancies, child abuse, aggravated truancy and indiscipline.
Long distances to schools may force some children, especially from poor households, to drop out. Some may be forced to wake up earlier than usual to walk to school.
The possibility is high in villages without guaranteed school transport. The dawn trek to school is risky for the vulnerable girl-child. Child abuse, sexual assault, rape and teenage pregnancies may spike, especially in rural areas with hostile terrains.
Irrational decisions of insensitive adults are risking children's access to education. Some children will gradually drop out of school when they cannot make the grade.
Most public primary schools today were created out of necessity. Some were offshoots of the mother school. It was a deliberate attempt to make education more accessible.
Some schools were established to satisfy a rising demand for education, and to decongest mother schools. It was a deliberate post-Independence government policy to make education more accessible.
Locations that had one school in the 1930s, today have 10 or more public primary schools. This has boosted enrolment and reduced distances children have to walk to school.
Sub-locations that had no schools in the 1960s today have five or more institutions to meet the rising demand for education. The development was planned to promote universal access to education.
Today's electoral wards that had two schools in the 1960s now have 30 or more such institutions. Some of the pioneer schools were largely established around Christian missions. Public schools sprouted to bridge and improve access to basic education.
School enrolment shot up and retention improved over time because pupils had easy access to schools. Irrational decisions that attend the transition to CBC will strain universal access to education.
