Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu on Monday declared that no secondary school should compel parents to buy uniforms exclusively from a particular outlet before form one admission.
The CS affirmed the ministry’s commitment to ensuring that parents and guardians of learners joining Form One are not burdened with unnecessary requirements that entail additional financial implications.
“Parents and guardians will have the liberty to source school uniforms from any distributors of their choice so long as the outfits comply with the specifications of respective schools,” Machogu said at Lenana School in Nairobi where he released the 2024 Form One Placement results.
“Schools have been asked to provide the specifications of their uniform, which include design, quantity required, and colour or shade.”
Machogu explained that this move would empower parents to make choices that align with their budgetary constraints. Additionally, he announced that the reporting date for all 2024 Form One learners will be on January 15, 2024.
“In the placement, all candidates who scored 400 Marks and above were placed in either National or Extra County schools of their choice,” he said.
Machogu mentioned that all remaining candidates were assigned to county or sub-county schools in accordance with the established parameters.
He explained that learners with special needs were allocated placements in either regular or Special Needs schools, considering their disability categories, merit, and preferences.
Furthermore, he highlighted that the Ministry has implemented affirmative action to support needy and vulnerable children in identified slums and informal settlements in urban areas.
“This is in compliance with the Government’s policy of achieving parity in education,” he said.
Through affirmative action, the ministry allocated placements to 130 learners in national schools and 167 in extra county schools, encompassing 150 girls and 147 boys.
“Besides the affirmative action on needy and vulnerable children, the placement also considered the Djibouti Declaration of 2017 on Regional Refugee Education and placed learners from primary schools located within the refugee camps,” CS Machogu said.
