Day schooling for junior high learners is for their own good

Nyali School

Students and teachers board a brand new junior secondary bus for a test drive at Nyali School in Mombasa City in November.


Photo credit: Kevin Odit | Nation Media Group

A section of stakeholders in the education sector has expressed dismay at a plan by the government to ban boarding schools for learners from Grades One to Nine, saying, it will be counterproductive.

The policy position was announced by the Principal Secretary for Basic Education, Dr Belio Kipsang, at the Kenya Primary School Heads Association (Kepsha) conference in Mombasa last week. Chuka University’s Alice Murwayi cited several reasons why boarding school is preferable to a day school in an education system.

In an article titled: “Ban on boarding schools may be counterproductive” (Daily Nation, December 2022), Murwayi argued that parents have a right to choose whether to take their children to a boarding or day school; that boarding schools teach children how to cope with the challenges of life; that boarding-school give students ample time to study and play, allowing parents to concentrate on the dynamics of their work, among other reasons.

Grade Six learners

A leading reason why education stakeholders across the country were opposed to the domiciling of Grade Six learners in secondary schools was that they were too tender to be separated from their parents and guardians. Parents were unwilling to release the children to an unfamiliar environment.

The right of parents to choose whether to take their children to boarding or day school doesn’t override the best interests of the child. The Children’s Act, 2022 and educational policy stands with the child’s growth and development on such matters.

The government’s decision to domicile junior secondary schools (JSS) in primary schools was informed by, among other reasons, the vulnerability of the ages of the children and the dynamics of the secondary school environment. Boarding school takes away children from the caring presence of adults. Older children unrelated to them and also their age mates cannot provide the same care as adults.  

Juvenile delinquency

 “The real and normal relations between children and adults, arising from the fact that people of all ages are always simultaneously together in the world, are thus broken off,” German Jewish political theorist Hanna Arendt notes in her essay, “Crisis in Education”. Arendt further argues: “The reaction of the children to this pressure tends to be either conformism or juvenile delinquency, and is frequently a mixture of both.”

The argument that boarding school gives learners more time to study and play doesn’t hold water. Day schools don’t compromise students’ learning and play. The school hours the Basic Education Regulations 2015 prescribes takes care of the instructional needs of all learners regardless of whether they are in boarding or day school.

 It provides for reporting time for all learners to be not earlier than earlier than 7.15am. The regulations stipulate that learners attend official teaching hours between the hours of 8am and 3:30pm with an extra hour and 15 minutes afterward for games and clubs.

Mr Buhere is the communications officer, Ministry of Education