The government has doubled down on its policy on primary boarding schools, with Education Principal Secretary Dr. Belio Kipsang saying that the boarding aspect of primary school education will not survive with the Competency-Based Curriculum.
The PS said the government’s new policy of domiciling Grade 7 to 9 in primary schools will gradually phase out the need for boarding primary schools and dramatically reduce the cost of basic education.
According to Kipsang, the government will not back down on the eventual eradication of boarding schools at primary level since the current system of education will self-correct the conflict now prevailing over the place of boarding schools for primary school pupils.
Let’s give more time for our children to be with their parents but again 96% of our primary schools are day schools and they will host junior schools. So we are not abolishing anything, because they are already day schools,” said PS Kipsang.
Kipsang’s sentiments were an affirmation of his Tuesday message on the same issue, which set off a raging debate on the place of boarding schools in the basic education sector.
The policy shift comes as the country prepares to transition the first cohort of the CBC to junior high, which according to recommendations of the CBC taskforce will be in existing primary schools.
His assurances notwithstanding, parents with children already enrolled in boarding primary schools are a worried lot.
The government however insists that this policy will be beneficial to the parents, teachers as well as learners.
It also insists that the phasing out of boarding primary schools will not affect some sectors of the community deemed vulnerable.
The State’s move is already receiving backing from Parliament.
Emuhaya MP Amboko Milemba, a proponent of the new policy, says it will be an equaliser in the education sector and make it easier and fairer to distribute CDF funds to all.
“For purposes of intervention, in the pastoralist areas where parents move in search of pasture, we shall invest even more in low-cost boarding so that it takes care of this particular group who require that intervention.”
In justifying the move, the government also cited the need to bring down the cost of education which is usually heightened by boarding costs.
