Form One admission extended by a week

Basic Education PS Belio Kipsang.

Parents with pupils transitioning from primary to secondary schools have been saved a last-minute dash to take their children to school.

The students now have until January 24 to report to their respective schools. The exercise was initially to end by close of business today.

Thousands are, however, yet to be admitted.

The George Magoha-led Ministry of Education says the seven day-extension will help achieve a 100 per cent transition. Loosely, this means every pupil who sat their KCPE in 2019 will join a secondary school.

“In order to ensure that no learner is left behind, the Ministry has made a decision to extend the reporting deadline by seven days. The last reporting day therefore shall be January 24, 2020 and not January 17, 2020 as earlier announced,” Basic Education PS Belio Kipsang said in a circular.

The Ministry also advised that schools should use the period to trace all their learners who have not reported and at the same time capture all reported learners in National Education Management Information System (Nemis).

Students and parents during Form One admission exercise at Igembe Boys Secondary School in Meru County on January 15, 2020. [Olivia Murithi, Standard]

Head teachers of primary schools were also tasked to make sure that all their 2019 candidates have been placed and reported to schools.

“They (head teachers) should report any child who is out of school for any reason to their respective Sub County Directors and National Government Administrative Officers,” the circular read.

Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha launched the Form One selection on December 2, 2019 and results for placement of students in national, extra county and county schools were released.

This was followed by selection of students to county and sub-county schools, which ended on December 6, 2019. Sub-county schools continued to file their selections lists in Nemis.

Challenges

The exercise had its fair share of challenges such as failure of the Nemis delaying the admission process in some schools forcing the head teachers to resort to enrolling them manually.

Parents of a number of students also faced challenges in completing the transfer requests since the Ministry had uploaded all schools to the Nemis.

Parents reportedly got stranded in accessing admission letters after successfully initiating transfers.