The Education Ministry has given a raft of recommendations to deal with the shortage of technical subject teachers, one of them sharing of teachers among various schools within the county.

Should this proposal be adopted, the affected teachers will offer their services in multiple schools, under guided instructions from the Teachers Service Commission.

According to the Curriculum Reforms and Implementation PS Fatuma Chege, optional subjects being taught in junior secondary schools may need more time to get adequate teachers.

“We can think of engaging roving teachers by rationalising available ones, identifying which teacher can teach what subject,” Chege said.

Chege, who once taught in a school teacher, was speaking during the Catholic schools principals’ conference.

In  an example given by the ps, they would share their French teacher with other schools when she was a student at St George’s girls.

“What used to happen is our French teacher would come to school once and have a session with all the classes on Monday and from there, she would teach other schools,” she said.

Additionally, as a music teachers in high school, Chege would also teach in several schools across the week because she had few lessons in her main school.

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Chege urged school principals to avail the list of subjects they can offer in junior secondary school.

This, she said, would allow students to select from a variety of subjects, while being placed in their respective institutions.

“The minimum optional subjects you can offer as a school is three. There are some schools that have already elected the subjects because of available infrastructure,” Chege said.

Due to the double intake of CBC learners and 2022 Form 1 students, the PS urged the principals to avoid demarcating the groups.

Chege said most schools have secluded CBC classrooms in one part of the school, away from the other classrooms.

“You find one block of classrooms in a school and when you ask about CBC classrooms, you are shown some structure in some bush,” she said.

The PS said this infrastructure ‘bias’ should not be extended to the learners in different curricula.

“As a school, you should receive the kids as secondary learners despite their age to avoid the conceptual problem,” she said.

The optional subjects are visual arts, performing arts, home science, computer science, Kenyan sign language and indigenous languages.

Foreign languages to be offered are French, German, Mandarin and Arabic.

According to the Basic Education Curriculum Framework, learners are expected to choose a minimum of one and a maximum of two subjects.

The pioneer cohort of CBC, currently in Grade 6, is expected to join junior secondary next year.

With the 2023 double intake into secondary schools fast approaching, stakeholders are worried about space, infrastructure and resources.

The Fatuma Chege led taskforce has hinted a major rationalisation of existing infrastructure.This, she said, will include merging some schools, creating space in institutions that have small enrolment data and addition of new classrooms only for specific cases on need basis.

“Even now a lot of arithmetic is going on to know which specific schools require additional infrastructure given that most schools have adequate spaces,” said Chege.

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This means schools should not expect budgets to construct new classrooms unless there is need. The PS said neighbouring schools will be encouraged to share some of the resources with other government institutions to cut cost and for effective utilisation.

Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Jwan asked parents not to panic over the looming move by Grade Six to junior secondary, saying transition should never be interpreted to mean change of location.

“We want Kenyans to conceptualise placement not as physical location but in terms of content being taught at that level. It is not a physical thing,” said Jwan.

He said even today, there are schools with Standard One to Form Four classes and what matters is the content change as they progress.

“As much as we shall place children in junior secondary within the existing secondary schools, where we have infrastructure within the existing primary schools we shall place them there,” said Jwan.

Chege said 75 per cent of learners will join day schools. She said during transition to junior secondary, for instance, for a single streamed school, the audit report recommended adding an extra class for 2023 so that they are five classrooms.

“Then as those children go in, we can add another classroom to make it six and that would be it,” said Chege.

However, she said if the school does not have many students and the neighbouring one has a good number, they will be merged.

“This will create space in the remaining school and can be used adequately,” she said.

The PS said the infrastructure audit report found that in most schools there are several classrooms against small students’ enrolment numbers.

“We recommended sharing of resources. CBC has areas that require technical learning and we said if there is a TVET with a workshop nearby why ask a school to build one,” said Chege.

As part of the immediate plans to prepare for the double intake headache, the CBC report has proposed mapping of primary schools against secondary schools with an aim of encouraging day schooling to address the transition challenge.

The report also proposes making provision for primary schools that have adequate infrastructure to establish a junior secondary school.

Broadly, the report recommends that the government undertakes progressive expansion of capacities of existing secondary schools that have adequate land to accommodate more learners in 2023. President Uhuru Kenyatta has asked governors to use their education budgets to support government efforts of expanding spaces in schools.

The president also appealed to MPs to use the National Government Constituency Development Fund allocations to support the programme.

Private schools have also requested to be included in the transition planning to allow them absorb some of the children to avoid congestion in public institutions.

“Let them send capitation per child to those in private schools so that we ease congestion in schools. We need a collaborative approach in managing the grand transition where children will not be private anymore,” said Mutheu Kasanga, the Kenya Private Schools Association national chairperson.

More resources will also be needed to improve infrastructure in universities.

Some 300,000 students who are expected to join the institutions of higher learning may miss out on college slots if adequate infrastructure is not provided.

The CBC report projects that 1.2 million learners presently in Grade 5 will join universities in 2029.

“About 420,000 students will be expected to join university with the assumption that 33 per cent will transit as the remaining 67 per cent join various tertiary institutions,” the report says.