The Kenya Primary Schools Heads Association (Kepsha) has called for the adoption of a shift system in learning when schools re-open on January 4, 2021.
Addressing the media on Monday December 28, 2020, Kepsha through their chairman Nicholas Gathemia claimed that they lack resources to ensure the health guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health are adhered to when schools re-open.
Gathemia opined that unlike secondary schools that were provided with funds to improve their infrastructure, the government did not provide funding for primary schools.
According to Kepsha, there are over 12 million pupils in around 23,000 public primary schools in the country, and allowing all students to resume school at the same time will result in chaos.
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The body wants students to study in shifts in a bid to enhance social distancing and other protocols by the Ministry of Health.
“Unlike secondary schools, primary schools were never given funds to improve on infrastructure or prepare schools for reopening. We are at a point of straining even as we prepare to receive learners next week,” Gathemia said as quoted by a local daily.
“If all learners will have to report back to school at the same time, schools will not have classes and spaces to accommodate them… We are proposing that the government allows school heads to call learners back in shifts as that is the only way we can observe social distancing in schools. Currently, schools don’t have enough classrooms,” he added.
