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Irene Githinji @gitshee

The Ministry of Education has directed secondary schools to strictly adhere to Form One admission guidelines,  to not only ensure accountability but also monitor achievement of 100 per cent transition policy.

Education Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) Sarah Ruto yesterday directed that admissions of all learners must be done in the National Education Management Information System (Nemis), meant to help streamline data management in the sector.

“All schools must capture their learners in the system. All learners received their admission letters through Nemis and we want that to be completed in the system.

This will make it easy for processes to flow,” said Ruto, when she monitored the first day of Form One admission at St George’s Girls in Nairobi.

Where parents applied for change of placement and was accepted, the CAS said this has since been effected in Nemis.

She urged parents to send the index number of their children to short code 22263 to confirm placement, download the letter if applicable and follow joining instructions, just to be sure they are at the right place.

Joining instructions

“We have situations where people applied for transfers and were accepted but they will go to their original schools and this might cause confusion and a waste of time.

Where this has been accepted, all you need to do to ascertain this, is to check under the transfer section of admission, parents should check and take their children to the right school,” said Ruto.

Ruto also said that only students who appear on the current Nemis list of a school will be admitted in that school.

“The joining instructions must be stamped by the head-teacher of the primary school where they sat the exam,” she stated.

Similarly, she said all deferred admissions will be done offline and processed later, with the County Director of Education expected to ascertain such cases beforehand.

The ministry also directed that no school should admit a learner who has not physically reported to the school.

Learners who are not able to take up their places on the stipulated dates, must inform the schools in advance.

Some 1,171,265 students selected to join various secondary schools started reporting yesterday, an exercise that is expected to run through to Friday.

However, she said that 20,000 students who sat their 2020 KCPE were not placed to secondary schools for various reasons like overage and being in prison.

She said schools were expected to put measures in place as part of observance of Covid-19 health measures and most of them have complied.

She said the ministry is optimistic that the admission process will run smoothly and in case of any unique challenge, it should be brought to the attention of the Director of Secondary Education immediately.