Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu is putting on a brave face affirming that all is well in the transition of learners to Junior Secondary School.
Machogu, who toured Kisii County on Thursday announced that 96% of learners have reported to school despite the fact that learning is yet to fully take off in a number of public Junior Secondary Schools across the country due to several challenges such as lack of capitulation, adequate textbooks and a poor pupil to teacher ratio.
“We expect 100% transition from Grade 6 to Grade 7 and am happy to inform Kenyans that for Junior Secondary Schools we are now at 96%,” Machogu said
It is more than a month since Junior Secondary Schools across the country opened for the first term. The government had promised to release capitation funds worth Ksh. 15,000 per learner in JSS, money that is yet to be released, a situation that has left many schools struggling to sustain learning activities.
Despite the assurance by the CS, a spot check done by Citizen Television revealed that learning in a number of public Junior Secondary Schools is yet to fully take off.
The school heads also raised concern over the poor pupil-to-teacher ratio which they say threatens the learning outcomes in Junior Secondary Schools..
The CS also announced that 17,800,000 JSS textbooks have been distributed to public schools across the country however some schools have yet to receive adequate textbooks in all the core learning areas.
“The textbooks are out in only a few areas that we have not been able to send the textbooks and that exercise is also ongoing by next week we should have finalized giving textbooks to each and every junior secondary school,” CS Machogu said.
