Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu has revealed that the ministry lacks 15,021 classrooms meant to be occupied by the first cohort of Grads 9 learners in 2025.
The CS spoke on Wednesday at the Senate when responding to a query by Nominated Senator Eddy Oketch on the State's preparation to accommodate the Grade 9 learners.
“The ministry has done its assessment and determined that we have a shortage of 15,021 classrooms for those who will be transitioning into Grade 9 in 2025,” he said.
Machogu said the ministry has tabulated the number of classrooms required countrywide as per county, adding that he had tabled the findings to the Senate.
When it comes to the infrastructural requirement for 2025, the CS gave assurance that everything is in place.
He said the government, for purposes of availing infrastructural resources, allocated a conditional grant of Sh3.39 billion to the NG-CDF which is being distributed across the constituencies.
The CS said the conditional grant will be used to build classrooms to fill the gap.
“The CDF we also agreed is supposed to match this funding from their allocation such that once we build one classroom using this fund, they will also be able to do another classroom,” Machogu said.
“Out of this, we expect that we will be able to do 6000 integrated resource centres for our JSS.”
Further, Machogu said the State engaged the World Bank and got an allocation of Sh9 billion meant to construct another 9,000 classrooms.
This in total will make 15,000 classrooms.
“We are working hard this particular year to make sure that the necessary required infrastructural developments in our schools are done in readiness for admission of Grade 9 learners,” he said.
Further, the CS reiterated that Grade 9 will be domiciled in Primary Schools as part of JSS. He said the learners will go to Senior School after Grade 9.
Machogu said JSS schools across the country currently have an enrolment of 2, 279, 052 learners in Grades 7 and 8.
“For Grades 7 and 8, we don't have a problem as far as classrooms are concerned,” he said.
