New laws ring in changes in education

Provincial and district schools will cease to exist under the new constitution. Instead, there will only be two categories — public and private.

The new constitution, which will be officially adopted next Friday, provides for counties and has no provisions for districts or provinces.

Additionally, two model schools will be built in each constituency as part of devolution. The schools — one for boys the other for girls — will be equivalent to the current national schools and will admit students from all over the country on a designated basis.

Three-pronged approach

Going by the proposed 290 constituencies, there will be at least 580 model schools across the country.

Currently, there are only 18 national schools situated in four provinces — Nairobi, Central, Rift Valley and Nyanza. Most of these are in Nairobi and Central.

Education Permanent Secretary James ole Kiyiapi said on Thursday after opening a workshop for private schools in Nairobi that details of the education sector realignment will be worked out by a taskforce to be set up in the coming weeks.

However, he said, the ministry’s focus is to guarantee every child has access to quality education.

“Since free and compulsory education is entrenched in the constitution, we have to come up with broad-based structures and systems that ensure every child goes to school,” Mr ole Kiyiapi said.

Prof Kiyiapi said the ministry will pursue a three-pronged approach to education reforms. The first will be to set up a taskforce to conduct a survey on the current status; the second will involve consultation of stakeholders and the third will be to formulate policy and legal frameworks.

“The policy and legal frameworks should be in place by next June,” he said. The PS said the ministry would set up a desk to deal with registration and management of private schools. He said new registration guidelines will be published after consultation with private investors.