School Reopening: Inside Magoha's Plan to Move Students to Next Class

by Stephanie Wangari on Tuesday, 13 October 2020 - 7:41 am

Education CS George Magoha addresses the media in Nairobi on Monday, September 21, 2020

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The Education Ministry will embark on a crash programme to normalise the national academic calendar in a bid to recover the seven months learners have lost during the Covid-19 break.

In the new plan, all students will be expected to move to the next class in June 2021, meaning that the 2020 syllabus will have to be covered from the time they reopen school to April 2021.

On the other hand, the Ministry plans to fit the 2021 school calendar in seven months, that is from May to December 2021.

Pupils attend a parade at a primary school in Kenya

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To accomplish this, students will be expected to start classes early and leave later than usual. Additionally, there will be a possibility of learners having classes on Saturday.

The students would also have their holidays reduced to one or two weeks. In December, for example, they would only close for a period of one week.

Contrary to the normal school calendar where learners were going for half term breaks during the first and second terms, this may not be a reality in the new calendar.

Education CS George Magoha on Monday, October 12, asked teachers to continue with the syllabus from where they left off in March as well as embrace the crash programme.

"We are confident that they will work on a crash programme to cover the lost months," Magoha stated.

Already, grade four, class eight and form four students reopened school on Monday, October 12. Both class eight and form four will be expected to start their exams in March 2021 and finalise in April 2021.

Those in class eight are expected to join form one in June 2021 while those in form four will join college or University in September 2021.

The Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) CEO Mercy Karogo has since stated that the above mentioned classes will have assessments administered to them from October 19 to 23.

"The overarching aim of the assessments is to inform on possible learning loss during the Covid-19 pandemic period and suggest interventions to be put in place to address the learning gaps," Karogo stated.

Other classes would also be examined once they re-opened schools.