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The Nyandarua Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) branch Secretary Johana Ndung’u has said that Grade Six domiciled in primary school should not be called junior secondary school.

He called for the name to be changed from junior secondary to either intermediate-level or senior primary.

Ndung’u, who is popularly known as Ndung’u J. in the union’s fraternity, said the name secondary should be preserved for the secondary schools in the country as we know it.

“If we refer to Grade Six as Junior Secondary, the children will be wondering why they are being called so and yet they are learning in primary school. This can affect them mentally and lower their academic esteem,” he said.

The KNUT branch secretary, however, praised the Presidential Working Party for recommending that the Grade six level of education be domiciled in primary schools saying it saved secondary school teachers from being overburdened with work.

Ndung’u equally lauded the government for hiring more teachers saying it showed the state’s effort to alleviate the problem of the shortage of teachers in the country.

He said basing the recruitment on the number of years a teacher has been jobless after graduating was the best formula.

“We in KNUT are happy that the recruitment of new teachers is giving priority to those who have stayed out for long after graduating,” he said.

He spoke in Ol Kalou during the election of a Tower Sacco director representing Ol Kalou Zone.

The hotly contested election saw James Mwangi Kiiru lose the directorship he held continuously for 32 years.

He got 219 votes against his only rival Patrick Kariuki Thogo who got 222 votes in the exercise presided over by the Nyadarua County Director of Cooperatives Veronica Kahura.

Kiiru lost the directorship in the backdrop of calls for old directors and those who have served for long to pave way for young blood.

“We need to put in a time limit for directors so that no one holds the position for life,” Stephen Mwangi a retired head teacher and former Tower Sacco director stated.

Mwangi claimed that many cooperative societies in Nyandarua collapsed because of directors clinging onto their positions for a long time.

He called for members of Tower Sacco, which is the biggest Sacco in Nyandarua, to push for directorship to be a mixture of old and young for continuity.

Thogo promised to use the next annual general meeting of Tower Sacco which is scheduled for January 28th in Ol Kalou to push for the adoption of alternative means of recovering money from loan defaulters instead of guarantors’ properties being attached before effort is made to trace the defaulters.

“We have cases where guarantors’ deposits are attached immediately a loan owner defaults. This is unfair since no effort to trace the defaulter is made before going for the guarantor’s property,” Thogo said.