The unpreparedness, poor capitation that has left grade 9 pioneering in limbo

When it was time for the pioneer group of grade six students to move into the newly introduced Junior Secondary category, a big debate broke out into where they would be best domiciled. 

One school of thought preferred the present secondary schools as the opposing group preferred being in the current primary school section. Second group won.

It did not end there as another long the debate resurfaced; where are grade nine students best placed? As this debate raged on in 2024 little was being done to arrive at a consensus and move to action. 

CBC has been beset by poor capitation, unpreparedness and impromptu adjustments to subject clusters as witnessed in the recent past. There have been persistent fears that the government is not fully prepared to receive Grade 9 pupils next year amid concerns about insufficient facilities and teachers.  

Over 11,000 classrooms in less than 70 days? 

On Sunday, President William Ruto sought to allay fears among parents, saying the government has plans in place to ensure a smooth transition for the CBC pioneer class. 

He promised the completion of 11,0000 classrooms for grade nine students in Junior Secondary Schools before schools reopen for the 2025 academic year. 

As schools closed down for the long holidays last week, some schools had kicked off the said construction while others had trucks delivering construction material to their schools. Tied close to this announcement is the solemn promise by the government to recruit and post over 20,000 teachers in January 2025 to alleviate the effort to bridge the teacher-learner ratio gap. 

However as late as July 2024, the Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association (KESSHA) requested the Ministry of Education to place the Grade 8 and 9 learners in Secondary schools due to inadequate resources in primary schools. 

KESSHA chairman Willy Kuria said the school heads want Grade 7 to remain in primary schools but Grades 8 and 9 be domiciled in secondary schools. 

Kuria said domiciling JSS in primary school will have learners in the same institution for up to 11 years. "With 11 years in primary and only three in secondary school, we are doubtful that these students will be well prepared to join university,” Kuria emphasized.

Humiliation at every turn 

CBC has suffered the disgrace of being treated as if it was an ad-hoc system of education as it moves from one hiccup to another without a break. 

In-service training for teachers is no longer being carried out save a few teachers taken in for re-tooling to handle the JSS cohort. 

Jason, is among the 46,000 intern JSS teachers who have been serving on contract and a graduate secondary school teacher. Now out on long holidays as the students prepare to sit national examinations, he says that he hoped the government was going to follow through on the president’s word and employ them on permanent and pensionable terms. 

He also hopes that the promise of over twenty thousand teachers to be recruited by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) would also go a long way towards alleviating their situation. In the JSS where he teaches, there are two streams and four classes with only three teachers holding fort until the fourth teacher was posted in the second term this year. 

Jason says one of his colleagues, also a graduate secondary school teacher grudgingly agreed to teach home science on condition that he would not be compelled to teach the practical part.

However, their greatest undoing has been the lack of science laboratories in primary schools where the JSS is domiciled. 

Not one to be easily outdone, Jason and his colleagues resorted to using YouTube platform, they have managed to use rudimentary projection methods to show the students how things go on in a laboratory as well as go through various practical classes.

His worry however is that 20,00 thousand teachers might seem many but divide this number against all the primary schools in the country and each school will be lucky to have one teacher!

Choice of the NG-CDF to implement classroom construction 

To the surprise of many observers, the president said the government had allocated Ksh.3.5 billion extra funds to the NG-CDF kitty to help in constructing the extra JSS facilities.

The president urged the members of parliament to act fast and make sure that the classrooms are ready on time for use by grade nine students next year. 

Herein lies the other problem; the High Court on September 20 had declared the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) Act 2015 unconstitutional for violating the principle of separation of powers. 

A three-judge bench comprising Justices Kanyi Kimondo, Mugure Thande, and Roselyne Aburili declared the Act unconstitutional. 

The fact that the NG-CDF had not met constitutional thresholds as a community level implementer of projects could probably have sent a strong signal to the authorities to make use of alternative implementation channels unless or until the Ng-CDF gets its act straight.

Studies indicate that the NG-CDF was introduced as a decentralized fund managed by MPs who implemented it at constituency level. Way before devolution, the NG-CDF and its precursor, the CDF, were the proto-types to the current devolved mode of grass level funding. 

The essence of the NG-CDF project implementation was to realize equitable socio-economic progress in all constituencies across the country. 

This would in turn, give all Kenyans a chance to identify and implement projects that suited their specific needs. 

The challenge still revolves around projects delays, stalled projects, poor quality of projects and unsatisfied communities in the project cycle. The CDF projects are not completed on schedule and on cost effective manner. 

What would baffle any casual observer is that by July 2024, there were no ongoing construction of junior primary facilities despite the intention by the government to construct almost over ten thousand classes before 2025. 

The elephant in the room is the public authority’s reputation for ineptitude and lack of veracity, come January 2025, will the classes be ready for use?