Schools Scramble to Recover Lost Academic Hours
Schools are scrambling to make up to the over 70 academic hours lost during the election break.
Schools closed on August 5 to allow the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to use select schools as polling stations and reopened two weeks later on Thursday.
The school administrations have begun contingency plans to complete their work in the limited time available.
This is after Education CS George Magoha clarified that all national examinations would be held as scheduled.
He stated that the school calendar would not be extended and that normalcy in the education sector would be restored in January of next year.
According to Sironga Girls School principal Eva Odhiambo, teachers will find it difficult to resume their work after the break, but they have put in place contingency plans to ensure they recover the lost time.
“We have had to alter our timetables to suit our goals for this term in regard to syllabus,” Ms Odhiambo said.
She stated that one of their plans to make up for lost time is to change the academic timetable to accommodate more lessons.
Teachers at Nyambaria School are working overtime to ensure that contact hours with students are recovered by slightly adjusting the timetable.
While there may be deliberate measures to recover the lost hours, chief principal Charles Orina stated that the institution does not want to overwork students.
“We are aware that students, too, may be overworked but it is a matter of balancing their timetables so that they are not overstretched,” Orina said.
Some schools, such as St Paul’s Gekano Boys in Manga Ward, Nyamira County, have had to reduce the game time from two hours to one hour to allow for more contact hours.
Evans Mogere, the school’s deputy principal, says students had been prepared and agreed to work on a revised timetable that would require them to participate more in academics than in other school activities.
Condensing related topics and harmonizing content are two of the methods the school is using to recover lost hours.
“We will do anything doable to make sure that learners don’t miss out on anything because we have very few days to do what we ought to do,” Mr Mogere said.
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School heads, according to Nyamira County Director of Education Boniface Ouko, are free to devise workable methods of ensuring the syllabus is well covered.
“What we are discouraging is a situation where schools ask for more money from parents to do extra work. It is prudent of school heads to ensure learners do not miss out on learning,” Ouko said.
Schools Scramble to Recover Lost Academic Hours
