99 per cent of CBC classrooms complete in Central

Samuel Maina-KNA

Ninety-nine per cent of Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) classrooms that had been earmarked for construction in the Central Region are now complete.

Central Region Education Director Sabina Aroni says the Government planned to construct 1,631 classrooms for Junior School learners in Nyeri, Kiambu, Murang’a, Kirinyaga and Nyandarua and out of the figure 1,600 have been completed.

Completion of the remaining classes has been occasioned due to logistical issues such as lack of ample land.

A case in point is the Mwiki Primary School in Kiambu which has been forced to build storied classrooms due to lack of space.

The school is among institutions with the largest student population in the country at 5,000 learners.

In June last year, the Ministry of Education said that 11,000 classrooms to host the JSS students will be constructed with support from development partners while 7,000 would be constructed with funding from the National Government Constituency Development Fund(NG-CDF).

“We have completed almost 1,600 of CBC classes and have only a few institutions that did not have land such as Mwiki Primary School which had been given 16 classrooms. So we had to request for adjustments to drawings and design so that they could expand upwards. Other than in a few institutions that had challenges with land for building, the others are complete.” she told the press yesterday.

The official similarly disclosed that preparations for receiving Grade 10 learners are in top gear with teachers expected to tutor the learners having already gone through all necessary retooling.

Aroni said the Government had in addition received enrolment data for the number of students who will be joining Grade 9 next year to enable proper planning including stocking of enough textbooks.

“The teachers (to handle Grade 10) have been retooled with assistance from the Center for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa(CEMASTEA) and the number of learners to be in Grade 10 have already been given and the textbooks that will be distributed.” she pointed out.” she stated.

On schools’ capitation, the Education boss put the record straight by clarifying that any institution that had sent verifiable data had received money.

She stated that the Ministry of Education had given clear guidelines to all Heads of Schools on the modality to be used in submitting the details of their learners in excel format and those who had adhered to the set guidelines were already receiving funding.

She nevertheless urged schools which had not received capitation to be patient to allow verification of their details and hopefully receive their money as soon as the exercise was complete.

“Any school whose data has been verified, money is being released immediately. Some schools have received money. So the hindrance to some schools not getting capitation is because data has been submitted in a wrong format or the figure of the declared data enrolment and the attached document are not tallying.”  clarified Aroni.

Previously, Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Bitok indicated that 32,000 schools had submitted their records with 3,000 schools having already received their Third Term capitation.

Bitok said the number of schools that had already submitted their records represented a 98 per cent compliance rate.

The PS assured schools’ heads that once their data get validated, money would be disbursed.

“So far, 3,000 schools have been able to receive capitation after being verified to have the correct data on the correct number of students,” Bitok  said.