WORLD OF FIGURES: How Education ministry is congesting public schools

The ministry of education regulations say that the standard classroom should be at least 8m long and 7m wide. In a secondary school, the maximum number of pupils allowed in such a room is 45. The obvious question that arises is whether it is possible to fit 45 desks and chairs in this space.

The average pupil’s desk/locker is about 60cm wide (side-to-side) and 45cm long (back-to-front). Although the chair is much narrower than the desk/locker, it still needs about 45cm (back-to-front) to allow easy mobility of the pupils.

Thus each pupil requires a rectangular space measuring 60cm wide and 90cm long. If we fit seven pupils in a column running from the back of the classroom to the front, the total length occupied will be 6.3m. This will leave 1.7m at the front for the teacher.

Next, we skip 40cm from the edge of the first column and line up another seven desks from back to front. If this arrangement is repeated over the entire width of the classroom, there will be seven rows of seven pupils each and enough walking space in between.

7 x 7 = 49 so the maximum capacity of the standard classroom is 49. Therefore, there should be no problem fitting 45 pupils.

The challenge that many public schools are facing is that the ministry increases their registered capacity before building additional classrooms. I visited Lenana School in Nairobi two years ago and a senior teacher informed me that for the previous decade or so, the government had been treating it as a seven-stream school even though it had only six classrooms per form.

The result was that Lenana was assigned 315 Form One pupils each year and these had to be squeezed into 6 classrooms. That is 52 or 53 per room instead of the ministry’s own limit of 45. Luckily, during my visit, I was shown a new classroom block under construction. I hope it is now complete.

Several county schools are now facing the same kind of congestion after their registered capacities were raised from four to five streams. This has increased pupil numbers from 45 to 57 per classroom. This is eight more than the capacity of the room!

Considering that the government does not provide building funds for schools in its regular budget and the schools are not allowed to collect the money from parents, this arbitrary increment of school capacities must be stopped immediately.

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Hot on the heels of the Members of Parliament are the Members of County Assembly (MCAs) also demanding to be compensated for the 8 months by which their term in office will be shortened. But I believe their case is valid.

Article 177(4) of the Constitution says quite plainly that “A county assembly is elected for a term of five years.” I believe this was a drafting oversight that we must pay for, or otherwise allow the county assemblies to continue operating with the current members until March 2018.

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