Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

All primary and secondary schools will close by the end of this week as first term ends.

First term began on January 23, at least two weeks after the usual time, as the Government had rescheduled the school calendar to recover from the time lost during the Covid pandemic. It also marked the return of the normal school calendar of three terms per year unlike the last two years when the ministry squeezed them to four terms.

At the start of the 2023 academic calendar, Education Cabinet Secretary, Ezekiel Machogu said the Government has been running a heavily constricted and re-organised school calendar in a spirited attempt to restore the normal term dates.

“This re-organisation of school term dates came at a heavy cost to parents in terms of pressure to clear school fees within short intervals; teachers having heavy workloads, while learners have had to cover more content within extremely short time,” Machogu said.

“I wish to thank all the stakeholders, especially parents and teachers, for withstanding the financial and teaching pressures respectively that came with the shorter school terms as forced upon us by the Covid-19 pandemic. Thanks to all your concerted efforts, we will from January 2023 revert to our normal school calendar,” he added. 

First term also marked another phase of Competency Based Curriculum  implementation as the first class comprising over 1.2 million learners transitioned to Junior Secondary School (JSS).

The Government domiciled JSS to existing primary schools, even as it declared that Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) would not be used for placement in Junior Schools. With the end of the term, learners will take a two-week break and resume on May 7.

Second term will run for 14 weeks, starting from May 8 to August 11. There will, however, be a half term break on June 29.

August holiday is also expected to run for two weeks from August 12 to 27 after which third term will be for nine weeks until October 27.

Other than the examination classes, the rest of the learners will close for 10 weeks until January 8, next year.

The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education and KPSEA are to be starting October 30 followed by Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education from November 3 to 27.