A team appointed by Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i has proposed that boarding schools that do not meet the minimum basic standards should be converted into day schools.
According to a report presented by the Clare Omolo-led team, an assessment of the over 4,000 boarding secondary schools in Kenya should be carried out within 12 months to establish their suitability.
While assessing the wave of school unrest witnessed last year, the team established that most boarding schools had failed to uphold requirements of the Safety Standards Manual for Schools (2008) and students were sitting ducks in unsafe classrooms and dormitories.
It noted that most schools had overcrowded and congested dormitories where students slept on triple-decker beds and the spacing between beds was not wide enough to allow a quick escape in case of an emergency.
"Most of the schools visited had filthy dormitories, as evidenced by the presence of bedbugs and foul smell.
“There was graffiti on some walls whose paint had peeled off, yet schools were expected to regularly paint buildings," stated the report.
The team lamented that the congestion was partly due to increased demand for space in boarding schools and pressure from the ministry to enrol more students during Form One placement.
They proposed that senior members of staff in charge of boarding facilities should reside in the institutions.
The task force called for the government to invest heavily in day schools to attract more students.
According to the Ministry of Education, there are 8,592 public secondary schools in Kenya with nearly half of these having boarding facilities.
The proposals come in the wake of last year's unrest in schools that left 239 dormitories destroyed with 483 cases of student unrest being reported.
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