Review of term dates to ensure credible results CS Matiangi

Cabinet Secretary for Education Dr Fred Matiang’i has said the review of term dates in the school’s calendar were part of the Ministry’s strategy to ensure that the administration of the national examinations give Kenyans credible results this time round.

Dr Matiang’i said that the shift of prayer days to second term was aimed at enabling the candidates to focus on examinations without the distractions that prayer rallies create in the candidates and the school programmes.

He, however, clarified that the schools were at liberty to hold prayers with the clergy before the examinations in November, 2016.

Dr. Matiang’i made the remarks when he officially opened a four-day conference for over 90 principals of national schools in a Mombasa hotel on Wednesday.

Dorothy Kamwilu, the Principal for Alliance Girls High School, supported the measures the Ministry of Education had undertaken saying they would help safeguard the credibility and integrity of the national examinations.

Ms Kamwilu said principals of national schools and their counterparts in other secondary schools supported the shift of all social activities to second term, saying it would give the schools and students time to prepare for national examinations without disruptions.

The Cabinet Secretary said the designation of school heads as managers of examination centres of their respective schools would ensure that they were responsible for the integrity of the administration of examinations at their schools.

“Principals are the right people to manage examinations; we cannot demonise all our teachers because of a few people,” Dr. Matiang’i noted, saying the society cannot entrust its children to principals for four years, and turn around and say they could not be trusted with examinations.

He said the Ministry had noted that the current model of textbook distribution in school was defective as it had not helped the government to achieve the desired 1:1 pupil to textbook ratio.

He said the government lost an average of Ksh 7 billion per year under the current model which, he observed, ought to be reviewed to get value for money.