National Parents Association warns of a crisis as students transit to Grade 10

Gilgil Mp Martha Wangari joins students and parents from Highway primary school in Gilgil when Equity Bank donated 70 desks to the institution. [Antony Gitonga] The National Parents Association (NPA) is warning of a crisis in January next year due to a lack of learning materials for students joining Grade 10. According to the association, the problem had been compounded by an acute shortage of teachers to undertake technical lessons for the incoming students. The move comes a day after the Kenya Publishers Association said that the government owed them over Sh11B, a move that had affected production of more books. According to NPA Secretary-General Eskimos Kobia, the delay in paying the publishers spelt doom for the students and their teachers. He noted that with less than three months before students transitioned from Grade nine to ten, there were no learning and training materials for both the students and teachers. "Every day we are waking up to a crisis in the education sector and this is eroding all gains made in the last 15 years and the government should wake up from its slumber," he said. He added that currently, many schools were struggling to pay to buy basic learning materials and to pay their staff due to failure by the Government to release the capitation fee. Speaking in Naivasha, Kobia noted that over 24,000 teachers were needed for the technical lessons before the students joined classes. "It's crisis after crisis as the government has failed to keep its promise of employing more teachers for technical lessons in Grade 10," he said. Earlier, the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) had warned of an acute shortage of teachers to undertake technical courses in Senior Secondary Schools. According to the institute, the only solution lay in retooling the current teachers even as schools continued to face an acute shortage of teachers, classrooms and laboratories. According to Dr Johnstone Ochuma from the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD), there was an acute shortage of teachers for technical courses in secondary schools. He said that in a bid to address the challenge in secondary schools, the Ministry of Education would have to retool the current teachers after the learning content was tweaked. "We have reformed the teacher education program by developing designs for aviation technology, power mechanics, building construction, metal work," he said. He was speaking in Naivasha during a workshop on the development of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) kit. The STEM kits are meant to support schools that do not have laboratories, as learners gear up to join Senior Secondary schools. "We shall have to deal with the teachers' problem when the time comes as we cannot turn back the students who will be joining senior secondary schools next year," he said.

National Parents Association warns of a crisis as students transit to Grade 10

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National Parents Association warns of a crisis as students transit to Grade 10

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