The annual ritual has begun again: Schools have closed two and a half months before the year ends. This is meant to allow graduating Form Fours and Grade Sixes to sit their national exams, but it leaves parents scrambling and reminds us again about inefficiencies in our academic calendar.
Parents with young children who cannot be left alone in the house are anxious. For those with jobs, they will have to arrange for care for their young ones. Household budgets will have to be adjusted. More money will be spent on food, electricity and cooking fuel.
While we have normalised this end-of-year disruption to our daily lives, it’s time to acknowledge that our current three-term system is more fiction than fact. The present system does not serve students, families or teachers. The academic impact is concerning: teachers struggle to cover the syllabus in compressed timeframes, while parents with children in private schools pay full-term fees in the third term for what amounts to just six weeks of instruction. This stop-start approach to education isn’t just inconvenient – it’s ineffective.
The solution is surprisingly simple: Let’s officially adopt a two-term academic year. This isn’t radical thinking – it’s simply acknowledging what is already happening and making it work better for everyone. A structured two-term system would run from mid-January to mid-May, followed by a six-week break, then classes would resume in July and end in mid-November. This leaves adequate time for national examinations through December.
The benefits are compelling. Students would enjoy more consistent learning periods without the current fragmentation. Teachers could plan their syllabus more effectively with two substantial terms rather than three short and interrupted ones. And parents could better organise their schedules and budgets around two predictable academic blocks.
Critics might argue that administering KCSE and KPSEA exams presents logistical challenges. Fine, but the Ministry of Education and the Kenya National Examinations Council have a whole year to prepare, plan and carry out these assessments. As for supervising exams, get the legions of unemployed Kenyans to do the job and take teachers out of it.
It’s time to stop pretending that our current academic calendar serves our educational goals. Let’s embrace a two-term system and create a more logical, efficient and productive academic year that benefits students, teachers and families alike. The question isn’t whether we should make this change – it’s why we haven’t made it already.