Private school pupils suffer fresh blow in Form One selection

• Entrants from academies make only a fifth of the class in national schools of their choice

Candidates from private primary schools have been allocated less than 35 per cent of the places in elite national schools with majority of them being sent to the newly-upgraded ones where facilities are inferior.

Data compiled from the Ministry of Education’s website shows that students from private primary schools filled only 819 of the 4,223 vacancies in established national schools such as Alliance, Mang’u, Kenya High, Nairobi School and Loreto Limuru Girls.

That means they only took 21 per cent of the vacancies in the 18 national schools that existed before 30 others were elevated last year in a crash programme meant to assuage a public outcry over the Form One selection criteria adopted last year.

“This is a very unfair way of treating our children since it is a well known fact that infrastructure between the old and newly-upgraded national schools is worlds apart,” said John Kabui, the Kenya Private Schools Association (KPSA) chairman.

The 21 per cent ratio in these schools is way below the 35 per cent of the slots that Education Minister Sam Ongeri said had been reserved for private school candidates when he launched the selection earlier this month.

Elevated institutions

However, the data shows that the overall ratio was attained by sending private school pupils to take up nearly half of the places in the newly-elevated national schools. They were given 2,789 — or 46 per cent — of the 5,855 places in the 30 newly elevated schools.

Specifically, private primary school pupils will take up more than half of the spaces in new national schools like Karima Girls (66 per cent), Maranda High (61 per cent), Kapsabet Boys (58 per cent), Kanga High and Bunyore Girls (57.8 per cent); Muthale Girls (57.2), Pangani Girls (56.7 per cent) and Moi High School Mbiruri (56.1 per cent).

The only traditional national schools that admitted more than 35 per cent of their classes from private schools, commonly known as academies, were Starehe Boys, Utumishi Academy, Starehe Girls and Moi Forces Academy, which admit students from pre-selected pools irrespective of whether they are from the private or public streams.

Vacancies in these schools are preferentially given to candidates from needy backgrounds and those whose parents serve in the uniformed forces and the public service. The data suggests there was a deliberate attempt to consign pupils from private schools that are believed to have better learning environment to the less glamorous national schools.

Of the initial national schools, Nakuru Girls, Nakuru High, Lenana, Nairobi School, Mary Hill Girls, Limuru Girls, Maseno and Moi Girls School Eldoret took less than 10 per cent of the candidates from academies.

A teacher’s lobby group has joined owners of private schools to oppose the selection criteria, demanding that the ministry repeats the already completed Form One selection, an unlikely outcome. (READ: Lobby: Repeat Form I selection)

“The government seems to be playing populist politics by trying to hide the deep-rooted problems in the sector by apportioning the bulk of the slots to public schools,” said Mr Abraham Kawewa, chairman of the Association of Professional Teachers (Tap).

He said there was no logic for students to select schools only for their choices to be disregarded after they qualified.

Last week, it emerged that many top performers from key private institutions had missed out on their first choice selections and had instead been admitted to other schools that they had not selected.

The Education Ministry, however, has defended the slanted allocations saying the newly-elevated schools, were selected on the basis of consistently good performance in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams.

“If you look at it critically, the percentage of private schooled students admitted to the initial 18 national schools is even higher than the 17 per cent of the total candidature such students represented in the exam,” said Prof James ole Kiyiapi, the Education permanent secretary.

According to him, Sh12.5 million had already been disbursed to the new national schools to renovate classrooms and improve boarding facilities.