Students of a local high school. Photo/FILE
By SAMUEL SIRINGI ssiringi@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Friday, December 16 2011 at 22:30
Posted Friday, December 16 2011 at 22:30
Thousands of candidates from private primary schools can now expect to join national secondary schools after the government scrapped the contentious quota system of admitting students into Form One.
In new rules released by the Ministry of Education, national schools will now use district quotas to pick students from public and primary schools in January.
The guidelines also scrap the provincial institutions category of schools, instead renaming them county schools, which will be allowed to select candidates from districts, counties and nationally.
The new rules will affect the 750,000 pupils who sat the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) last month.
Their examination results are expected to be released immediately after Christmas. County schools will reserve 40 per cent of their places for candidates from the regions the institutions are in.
Each of them will pick another 40 per cent of candidates from other counties.
The rest, 20 per cent, will come from the district where the school is located.
There are 47 counties in the country. The new rules are spelt out in a circular by the director of secondary education, Mr Robert Masese, on behalf of Education Permanent secretary James ole Kiyiapi.
The circular, titled Projections for Year 2012 Form One Admission to Secondary Schools, was sent to all provincial directors of education recently.
Based on the new guidelines, for instance, well performing Ng’iya Girls Secondary School in Siaya county, with a class capacity of 180 students, will select 36 candidates from Siaya district.
It will then pick 72 candidates from Siaya county and the same number from all the other 46 counties in the country.
But the school will shed the county label when it is elevated to national status in the second and third phase of the government upgrading programme.
The new district and county admission ratios are different from those proposed by the secondary school heads.
The Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association chairman Cleophas Tirop had proposed that schools promoted to national status admit 30 per cent of Form One students from their respective counties and the rest nationally.
Mr Tirop said the new criterion would ensure all counties sent candidates to good secondary schools.
According to Prof Kiyiapi, national schools will be spared the new rule counties rule.
They will be allowed to select students based on the old quota system that allows all districts to send students depending on the number of candidates.
Public and private school candidates will compete on an equal footing for places in the national schools.
Prof Kiyiapi asked provincial directors of education to provide details of admission data ahead of the January selection.
“In preparation for Form One selection exercise in January 2012, you are required to provide the relevant information on the basis of the new guidelines,” Prof Kiyiapi said.
For the already existing 18 national schools, he said, admission figures will remain the same as this year.
Prof Kiyiapi also provided the figures of the anticipated capacity of the 30 new national schools that were created this year to raise the admission to the schools from 4,000 to 10,000.
There were 18 national schools before the new ones were created.
“For the purpose of Form One selection, all boarding secondary schools will be categorised as county schools while day schools will be categorised as district schools,” he said.
Computation of quotas into the county schools will be based on the districts’ KCPE candidature in 2011.
Other schools that are not classified as national, county or district will be required to select from their counties only.
Prof Kiyiapi asked the education officials to make returns of the projected admission to private secondary schools.
The officials had until September 30 to provide the information to the ministry.
The move comes just two weeks after private schools asked the government to review guidelines for admitting Form One students.
Kenya Private Schools Association chairman John Mwai said parents and teachers from private schools were getting anxious that their candidates may be “discriminated” in the admissions.
Mr Mwai said private school owners had resolved to seek audience with the Education ministry to get a clarification on the formula of selecting candidates.
But on Friday, Mr Mwai welcomed the new rules.
“It is best to show that all children are treated equally,” he said. Mr Mwai said the move will now give parents the confidence to retain their children in private schools.
Mr Tirop recently called for the scrapping of the quota since there were more national schools.
Only a quarter of candidates who sat the KCPE from academies last year were admitted to national schools this year, in a move that was aimed at offering affirmative action to government-sponsored candidates.
Under the quota admission policy early this year, candidates from public schools took three quarters of the 4,000 slots in national schools.
Private school owners moved to court to oppose the move but lost the case.
Recently, Prof Kiyiapi said the ministry will spend Sh750 million on the 30 schools that have been upgraded to national status next year.
The schools, he said, had been allocated Sh25 million each and had have received Sh12.5 million. Prof Kiyiapi said that the remaining amount would be released before the close of the year.
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