
School Principals Meet In Preparation To Host Grade Seven In Junior Secondary.
Secondary school principals will meet in Mombasa on Monday for their annual conference to discuss how their institutions are preparing to host junior secondary students under the competence-based curriculum.
They will also discuss the institutions’ financial viability ahead of the school’s reopening on April 25 and the start of Form One classes on May 3.
The Ministry of Education is also expected to release the 2021 KCSE exam results next week.
This will be the first physical meeting of the heads since the Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020.
The heads will also discuss how to keep schools safe from Covid-19, the use of technology in schools, improving performance, principals’ and teachers’ mental health, student indiscipline, and parental engagement.
The meeting, which is set to end on Friday, will also bring together stakeholders from the sector, including ministry officials, Teachers Service Commission (TSC) officials, unions, and parents’ association officials.
According to Kahi Indimuli, chairman of the Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association (Kessha), the conference is critical because it will help principals discuss the implementation of the competency-based curriculum (CBC) in secondary schools.
Around 1.5 million students are currently in Grade Five and will be moving on to Grade Six in May.
The students are scheduled to take their national exams in November and begin junior secondary school in January of the following year.
Mr Indimuli stated that in preparation for the roll-out, principals have been preparing their schools to house the students.
Nancy Macharia, the TSC’s CEO, stated that 60,000 secondary school teachers will be trained on the CBC prior to the junior secondary roll-out.
“The target group for training will be all teachers handling Grade 7, 8 and 9 from both public regular and special needs schools, and private schools,” said Ms Macharia.
The first level of training will focus on language teachers, pure science teachers, applied science teachers, mathematics teachers, humanities teachers, and technical subject teachers.
ALSO READ:
The most recent Kessha national conference was held in 2019. Due to Covid-19, subsequent physical conferences in 2020 and 2021 were postponed.
Over 9,000 principals from across the country are expected to attend the conference.
They will talk about how schools should deal with congestion in dorms and classrooms as most schools, according to Mr Indimuli, are currently in financial distress.
School Principals Meet In Preparation To Host Grade Seven In Junior Secondary