Olympic Primary School gets Ksh 120M classrooms

More than 1,000 students of Nairobi’s Olympic Primary School are set to benefit from the new classrooms constructed in a Ksh 120 million partnership between the County Government of Nairobi and financial services
company Britam Group, aimed at decongesting the elementary school.

According to the Nairobi County Executive for Education and ICT Ann Lokidor, the Olympic Primary rehabilitation project was launched in July 2014 by Governor Dr. Evans Kidero and the Britam Group managing director which saw 32 new classrooms constructed, raising the number to 64.

“The additional classrooms will comfortably accommodate over 1,000 students, significantly easing the pressure on the school’s facilities and providing a better learning atmosphere,” she said during an inspection and handing over ceremony of the new classrooms.

She lauded the partnership between City Hall and Britam, but noted that the school still needed more help to fill the current shortfall of 18 classrooms.

On his part, Governor Kidero noted that despite the great strides achieved by the provision of free primary education in the country, the lack of infrastructure is still a big challenge.

“The upgrade of Olympic Primary was a key promise that my government made back in 2014 and I’m happy that it has been realized. This is just the beginning, we will continue to allocate significant resources to the education budget to address the many gaps in our City schools,” said Dr Kidero.

Britam Foundation also voiced on the matter saying that it had been a pleasure to work with the County Government of Nairobi to ensure that every child gets access to education.

The Olympic School head teacher Ms Ruth Namulundu expressed her joy clarifying that the new classrooms would help to lower the number of pupils per classroom from the current 87 to an average of 49.

Adding that the lower student-teacher ratio is expected to improve the learning environment and help Olympic Primary to reclaim its position as one of the top schools in the country.

Ms Lokidor promised that Nairobi County would continue to work closely with the private sector and other stakeholders in the education sector so as  to help in the upgrade of infrastructure of City schools.

Olympic Primary, which is one of the oldest public schools in Nairobi County, has over 4,000 pupils drawn mainly from the surrounding Kibera slums.

The introduction of free primary education in 2003 saw a sharp increase in the number of students seeking to join the top-performing school, but the increased enrolment was not matched by an expansion in
infrastructure of the institution.