Education ministry builds 103 CBC classrooms in Laikipia

The Ministry of Education has constructed 103 classrooms at 101 public primary schools in Laikipia County as it rolls out the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC).

Speaking to the media in his Nanyuki office on Tuesday, county quality assurance and standards officer Dr Amadi Mugasia said the classrooms are almost complete.

“The 103 classrooms are 96 percent complete pending official commissioning in the next one week. They will be fully utilised for the CBC programme,” Dr Mugasia said.

Last year, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed the allocation of Sh8 billion to build 10,000 classrooms ahead of the junior secondary school rollout.

“Grade Five learners have only one year to go. As a government, we need to prepare by ensuring more infrastructure to accommodate them in junior secondary school,” the President said.

Mr Kenyatta directed the ministries of Interior, National Treasury and Education to establish a framework for rolling out the programme.

“The Education and Interior ministries should ensure only contractors within the vicinity of every school are engaged so as to stimulate the local economy,” Mr Kenyatta said.

Dr Mugasia said 1,420 Form One students had been enrolled in secondary schools in Laikipia East sub-county as of Friday last week.

He said the majority of students enrolled in the county are from Laikipia, Kiambu, Isiolo, Samburu, Nairobi, Embu, Nyeri, Kwale, Machakos, Nyandarua and Lamu counties.

Nanyuki High School had enrolled 368 of the expected 400 students.

Dr Mugasia said 142 of the expected 400 students had been enrolled in Laikipia North sub-county.

He said about 2,000 students had enrolled for Form One in Nyahururu sub-county, adding that more are expected by the end of this week.

“As you are aware, students started reporting in schools on Wednesday last week and probably the majority of parents are still planning to enrol their children. We expect a 100 percent transition from primary to secondary,” Dr Mugasia said.

Some 12,158 pupils sat the 2021 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exams in Laikipia. Of these, 10,583 were from public schools and 1,575 from private ones.

Last year, the ministry earmarked Nanyuki High School for adoption as a CBC centre of excellence.

“I am going to give Nanyuki High School priority in terms of scaling it up to a CBC centre for junior and senior secondary schools. We want to make this institution a model CBC school,” said Dr Julius Jwan, principal secretary for early learning and basic education, after visiting the school.

Dr Jwan noted that adopting the school as a model for CBC learning would make it easier for the ministry to allocate it more money for further infrastructure development.

Prof Charles Ong’ondo, the director of the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD), was impressed with the school’s new aviation and electricity workshops that have been set up in readiness for the rollout of the CBC model.

“This school itself is a laboratory in CBC. Its learners are able to demonstrate what they have learned, which is the spirit of the new curriculum,” said Prof Ong’ondo.

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