OLD-SCHOOL: Pupils and a parent arrive at Upweoni Primary School, Malindi, during the opening day on January 7, 2013 after the long Christmas holidays. Photo/Alphonce Gari
THE annual school calendar is being reviewed, with First Term learning designed to start in September. This is proposed in regulations being prepared by the Ministry of Education to make the Basic Education Act 2013 fully operational.
The regulations propose, “To align the school calendar to the fiscal government calendar year". The government's financial year runs from July 1st to June 30th.
The change of calendar envisaged by the ministry is a follow-up to the Douglas Odhiambo task-force report of 2012, re-aligning education to the Constitution of Kenya 2010.
The task-force had also noted that that, “The months of July and August have minimal public holidays, allowing for ample time for management of examinations". The ministry considers this as a key element of why the school calendar should be changed.
Unending delays in the disbursement of free primary and free day secondary schools cash is another reason that informed the task-force's proposal for a change of calendar.
The ministry is presently collecting views from stakeholders on the draft policy. The regulations' first stakeholder input took place on Tuesday this week at Jogoo House, Ministry HQ, and will continue for the next three weeks.
The regulations state that First Term learning shall be from the first Monday of September to the last Friday of November, a total of 13 weeks of learning.
“The First Term vacation shall be for three weeks in December,” the report says. It adds that the first week of the December holidays, dubbed Community Outreach for all students/pupils, includes activities not limited to environmental cleaning, tree-planting, charity walks and other voluntary services.
The students will be supervised by respective Boards of management, in collaboration with Parents/Teachers’ associations. The community outreach exercise will be repeated in the first week of subsequent school holidays - in April and August.
Second Term will be from the first Monday of January to the last Friday of March, 13 weeks of learning with three weeks for the April vacation. Third Term shall be from the first Monday of May to the last Friday of July, also 13 weeks, and five weeks of holiday in August.
The delay in the disbursement of free primary and free day secondary schools' cash persists despite an agreed formula to release the funds in 50, 30 and 20 percentages for First, Second and Third terms.
Every primary school pupil receives Sh1,020 per year, while their secondary school counterparts receive Sh10,265 per year, which the government says it has now increased to over Sh13,000 per student.
Kenya Secondary Schools Head-teachers’ Association chairman John Awiti and two parents' association bosses, Nathan Baraza and Musau Ndunda, agree that aligning the school calendar to the fiscal calendar year is a sure way of ending the cash delays at a time when government wants to make both primary and day secondary education completely free.
Awiti said the regulations must be discussed and disseminated adequately to make the public understand and accept them. But an education expert faulted the calendar change, arguing the problem has always rested with the ministry of Education, which fails to make early funds requests to Treasury thus causing the delays.
New students report to universities in September, which Ndunda and Baraza commend, saying primary and secondary will also match this intake pattern. This means that if the regulations are adopted, Class One pupils and Form One students will be reporting to their new schools in September, unlike the case at present, where they report in January. The system will be in tandem with those in Europe and the Americas.
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