A crucial meeting to be held on Monday to decide whether schools will reopen before January 2021.
The meeting organized by Education CS George Magoha will be held at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development.
The ministry of education set January for schools’ reopening provided the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic has come to pass.
But school heads and private schools have asked the government to reopen schools in October for finalists in secondary and primary schools.
The Kenya Private Schools Association also wants the KCPS and KCSE exams to be done in December this year.
According to the proponents of earlier opening, students will not have to cover the whole syllabus and the exam be customized to cover up to Form 3.
The Kenya Private Schools Association chair, Mutheu Kasanga said the government should provide exams for the period the students had covered.
“International schools were able to transition all their learners without an examination… they used other parameters. Why do we want to make examinations a matter of life and death?” he asked.
On the other hand school heads who want schools to reopen in October, disagree with Kasanga’s early exam proposal, saying the earliest the exams can be administered is at the end of February.
But the Kenya Nationa Union of Teacher faults the reopening of learning institutions before January and early examination terming it premature.
KNUT secretary-general, Wilson Sossion said schools are not ready to reopen, even to accommodate just the finalists.
Sossion added that the Union will not support reopening before January.
“Part of the reason we closed schools is to allow for preparations to reopen – have we done that?” Sossion posed.
On the other hand, the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association chairman, Indimuli Kahi said institutions can accommodate candidates comfortably without expanding resources.
According to Kahi, school principals support the early opening but oppose having exams before the end of the year.
“There is a lot of unlearning that has taken place over the lockdown period. A lot of children have not been engaging academically and this derails what they had gained… We need to be fair and allow enough time for all candidates to prepare,” he said.
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He argues that if exams are to be done, February should be the earliest possible date.
Kadi said the bigger concern was on the lack of preparedness to accommodate the subsequent reopening of other classes.
“There is no preparation that has been done in schools since they closed and how then will we be able to accommodate the other students?” Kahi asked.
Education CS Prof Magoha has maintained that students will have to remain at home until it is safe to return to physical classrooms. According to him, it is better to have a living child at home than a dead one succumbing to the virus after the premature opening of schools.
Related: ‘Schools Reopening is Next Year’ Magoha claims,Blaming Media for the Confusion
