The new school will operate on the new 2-6-6-3 educational system, as described by the education reform task force.
If the proposed changes are included in the final report, a principal will be in charge of the Comprehensive School, which will be made up of the nursery, primary, and junior schools.
A teacher who will be known as the deputy principal will oversee the parts of the nursery, primary, and junior schools. Currently, county governments are in charge of nursery schools.
Additionally, the Teachers Service Commission will engage and pay the tutors if the draft plans are approved. These are some of the draft recommendations being polished to be included in a final report by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER).
When TSC is hired by the county government, they must add nursery school teachers to their payroll. However, the ministry of education will be responsible for hiring the teachers after closely consulting with the county administrations.
The goal, according to task force insiders who spoke to the Saturday Standard, is to harmonize the teaching industry by placing all registered teachers under the Commission. These suggestions draw a picture of how the new school will be organized if they are accepted. However, unlike the current system, the new schools won’t be divided into National, Extra County, County, and Sub-County categories.
The group intends to replace existing clusters with a new one that incorporates the three paths. According to the team, classifying schools as National, Extra County, County, or Sub County results in discrimination in resource allocation, favoring some schools over others when it comes to enrolment. The task force prefers to replace this with day, boarding, mixed (day/boarding), mixed (boys/girls), and according to the three Senior School routes (Science, Arts, and Sports Science).
The team also suggests creating affordable boarding elementary schools in underserved locations, with a focus on providing resources and infrastructure assistance for Sub-county Senior Schools. The reforms team has also suggested alterations to the make-up of school management boards in an effort to eliminate their unsustainable over-representation.
The Boards of Management (BoMs) and Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) in basic education institutions are excessively big and expensive to run, according to sources in the task group.
Others on the task group stated that the absence of government representation on school boards prevented institutions from serving as advisors on security-related issues.
New suggestions call for Senior School boards to have 10 members and Comprehensive School boards to have 13. The team suggests adding two more parent board seats to the Comprehensive School, while the Senior School will only have a chairman of the PTA. Both will have three sponsors of the school representatives, including two professionals and one person who represents disabled people.
In addition, there will be three ex-official members of the senior school board and four ex-official seats on the board of the comprehensive school.
A member of the county’s nominating committee or the ward administrator will serve on the school board. This will be in addition to the Principal, the Sub County Director of Education, or a Ministry employee from the National Government Administration Office (NGAO).
The team also suggests a fresh funding scheme for the students at the new school. The current funding for free primary education (FPE) is ksh.1,420 per student, and the funding for free day secondary school (FDSE) is ksh.22,244 per student.
However, each nursery school student will earn Sh1,170 from the government annually under the revised capitation. Ksh.2,238 per elementary school student will be givenEach student in senior secondary schools would receive Ksh.22,527 annually, while students with special needs will also receive support for nursery schools and primary school students totaling Ksh.604 and Ksh.3,624, respectively.
Junior secondary and senior school students with special needs would receive an additional Ksh.10,000.
