Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association wants the Ministry of Education to domicile Grade 8 and 9 learners in Secondary schools due to inadequate resources in primary schools.
KESSHA chairman Willy Kuria on Thursday vowed to initiate discussions with the government to have Grades 8 and 9 domiciled in secondary schools.
Currently, Junior Secondary School from Grades 7 to 9 is domiciled in primary schools.
"As secondary school heads, we had proposed this and we still stand by it. That part of the JSS classes should be in secondary schools and another part in primary schools," Kuria said on Thursday at Murang'a High School.
Kuria said the school heads want Grade 7 to remain in primary schools but Grades 8 and 9 be domiciled in secondary schools.
He said this is because secondary schools have more resources like empty classes, laboratories and teachers to cater to the needs of the learners.
The government has promised to construct 16,000 classrooms to accommodate Grade 9 in primary schools in 2025, but construction is yet to begin.
Additionally, he said domiciling JSS in primary school will have learners in the same institution for up to 11 years.
"With 11 years in primary and only three in secondary school, we are doubtful that these students will be well prepared to join university," he said.
"We are afraid that three years is a very short time. During our time, we spent six years in high school and seven years in primary school. That is why you find those students were prepared to go to university."
In Kuria's opinion, 11 years in primary will not promote the development of the child.
Further, Kuria called on the government to ensure secondary school capitation gets to the institutions on time.
The KESSHA boss said delays in disbursing capitation hinder the smooth operations of schools.
Students are currently in the second term which will end on August 5.
Kuria claimed that currently, schools have received about Sh10,400 out of the Sh22,244 allocated per student annually, an amount he said is too little to sustain them in school.
“We want the entire capitation to be directed to schools so that we can continue to advance our activities as far as tuition and operations accounts are concerned,” he said.
