Magoha reiterates school calendar will not change

Irene Githinji and Eric Juma

The school calendar will not change and learners are expected to resume learning next month as scheduled, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has said.

Speaking when he supervised distribution of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exam papers in Kiambu, yesterday, Prof Magoha said he does not intend to summon education stakeholders to work on a new schedule.

“For the calendar year, I am leapfrogging forward and hoping that since it looks like the Covid-19 pandemic is starting to flatten, there may be no need for now, for me to summon the education stakeholders to look afresh at the timetable… so the timetable remains as we had decided earlier in the year and by the grace of God the children will come back to school the time we said they should,” said the CS.

There were fears school dates could change owing to the Covid-19 situation, which has seen the government impose a cessation of movement in five most hit counties to contain the disease.

Normal school calendar was disrupted for nine months last year owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw the ministry review the calendar.

Recover lost time

A tight schedule was then developed to recover the lost time, with this year expected to have four school terms.

According to the revised calendar, Term 3 for Pre-Primary 1 to Class 7 (except Grade 4) and Form 1 – 3 will run for 10 weeks starting May 10 and end on July 16.

There will be a three-day half-term break from June 3 to 7 and a one-week holiday break from July 17 to 25.

The 2021 calendar will then be expected to commence on July 26 to October 1, for First Term when Grade 4, which completed its third term last month, will resume classes after a three-month break.

Candidates who sat their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exams last month will join Form One in July while Grade 4 learners will be moving to Grade 5. The normal January-November school calendar is expected to resume in 2023.

Yesterday Magoha said both KCPE and KCSE exams have been executed successfully, despite the pandemic, which was on an all-time high during this period.

“As you are aware, the exam is ending next week on Wednesday. So far, as far as the Covid-19 pandemic is concerned we can only be grateful for God’s mercy because we have been dealing with a large number of students — over 752,000  — and there have not been major issues,” he said.

The CS said even the female candidates who delivered during the exam period had their papers presented to them wherever they were.

And despite the rains experience in the last week, Magoha assured that the government has prepared itself to deal with delivery of examination materials on time so that the subjects left between today and Wednesday next week will be taken as scheduled.

Arrested masterminds

He insisted the exam has not been leaked and the ministry also arrested masterminds of early exposure in Rusinga. “We have disrupted the rogue nature of people who wanted to start exposing exam before time. The exam has not leaked, you notice how careful the government has been, we have carefully assessed every container with test papers and that is the way it should be done.”

Elsewhere, Education PS Julius Jwan warned parents and candidates against being duped to buy fake papers, as he insisted no unauthorised person can access the sealed materials. “No one who can have prior access to the exam papers given the way the security features and seals have been done. You must be vigilant and never fall prey to those characters. If somebody tells you that he or she has an examination paper, ignore them, that is pure lies,” said Dr Jwan when he supervised the exams in Bondo.

Much as arrests have been made in Homa Bay and Migori, Jwan said there were cases where some unscrupulous individuals tried to tamper with the papers after being distributed from the container.

“Some of the teachers who access the papers once it’s handed over to exam team at the centers wanted to screen shot papers and send to other schools. They wanted to give others undue advantage as in the cases seen in Migori and Homa Bay counties,” said Jwan.