Education Cabinet Secretary, George Magoha, is under pressure to effect the new placement formula for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) candidates that will see all those who scored over 400 marks join national schools.
The CS, earlier on, announced that affirmative action will be applied to ensure all national schools in the country have a national outlook in terms of representation.
However, parents drawn from the larger Kiambu County have opposed the formular demanding to be allocated 30 per cent of the slots in national schools based in the region.
Addressing the media on Tuesday, April 5, the parents argued that all students who scored 400 marks from the county should be given first priority during the placement process.
The demands were issued by Kiambu Parents Association led by their chairman, Samuel Wanjema, and the Kiambu County Assembly Education Committee member, Peter Wainaina.
Wanjema and Wainaina claimed that they have been short-changed in previous years and would not settle for less this year.
“Our concerns as raised by parents and headteachers from the primary schools is that our students be given 30 per cent of the slots from the over seven national schools in the county.
“We need the slots during selection. They should in fact be given all those slots,” Wanjema stated.
Wainaina added that out of the 3,500 slots, at least 1,000 should be given to Kiambu students.
“We are not requesting, we are demanding. Those are our schools, we built them,” Wainaina, who represents parents at the county assembly, stated.
According to Education CS, selection will be done in a more fair way for all pupils.
Top students from across the country will be picked and placed in one pool before being placed in different national schools.
"We will take the marks of all children, then we will get the best from all those counties and place them to different national schools distributed across the nation," Magoha stated, adding that this will work towards ensuring all top schools in the country have a national outlook in terms of representation.
