Basic Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang has announced that the government is considering adopting a shift learning system to tackle the ongoing concerns surrounding the construction of Grade 9 classrooms.
Speaking during a multi-agency assessment of Grade 9 classrooms in Nairobi, Kipsang outlined the proposal, which would allow two groups of students to share the same facilities, with their usage times staggered throughout the day.
Kipsang emphasized that the double-shift system aims to expand school capacity while managing budget constraints.
“We are going to have short-term mitigating solutions to be able to give us time to finalize on any schools that we are putting up a classroom,” Kipsang stated.
“In some situations, even where the congestions might not allow, we can have a multi shift within the time where when there is a class that is having outdoor activities then within that time that group can be optimized to disrupt learning.”
The Ministry of Education is striving to meet its target of constructing 16,000 classrooms by February. Kipsang noted that so far, 3,000 classrooms have been completed with the support of the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) and are ready for use. An additional 2,000 classrooms are currently under development.
The Ministry has already completed 10,500 out of the targeted 11,000 classrooms, bringing the total number of ready classrooms to 13,500.
“We can confidently say that 13,500 classrooms are now ready to accommodate students across the country,” Kipsang announced.
Addressing concerns about book shortages, Kipsang revealed that the Ministry has distributed 9.9 million books to schools across nine learning areas. Despite this effort, he acknowledged that teacher numbers remain insufficient to meet national demand.
Currently, more than 80,000 teachers are qualified to teach Grade 9, but this figure still falls short of the country’s needs. To address the gap, Kipsang said the Teachers Service Commission has issued posting letters to 20,000 teachers and converted 46,000 intern teachers to permanent and pensionable positions.
