Confusion has rocked the registration and regulation of schools offering informal education in the coountry after the Ministry of education accused some of the institutions operating as private schools.
The Ministry of Education will close informal schools from next week over violation of its rules.
It says the schools are operating illegally, as most of them are unregistered.
The directive might lead to a row between the ministry and the institutions. The ministry has in two years declined to register hundreds of schools as alternative providers for basic education and training (APBET), citing lack of required criteria.
In a circular to county education boards, the ministry seeks to have the institutions registered as private schools. About 3,000,000 children in these institutions might have to seek alternative schools.
Why is it hard for the Government of Kenya and Ministry of education finding it hard to implement the APBET? @KBCChannel1 #BTHKBC
— Lord Abraham Mutai (@ItsMutai) September 17, 2017
Currently, Bridge International Academies is the biggest provider of informal education and has, in the past three years, been in a push and pull tussle with the ministry. The World Gank and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded chain of schools operates more than 400 schools across the country.
Previously, the government provided capitation of Sh700 to each student in the institution for tuition fee, while parents were required to pay a minimal fee of about Sh500 to cater for other services.
Director of quality assurance at the Education ministry Pius Mutisya said the institutions have overstepped regulations by opening schools past zones they are required to operate.
According to the Kisumu County APBET chairman Mr John Onyango, the 53 private schools are operating legally within the provisions of APBET policy. They have operated for 3 years.
Onyango says that they are running the schools professionally and most of the teachers teaching there are registered with the professional Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
He explained that the schools are distinct from the public ones because they offer special attention to the orphans and vulnerable.
Unlike the public schools, Onyango claimed that in the APBET run institutions, even pupils with medical challenges requiring keen attention were being admitted there.
”These include the rejects from other schools either sent away because they are pregnant or over indiscipline cases. So the APBET centres rehabilitates them,” he says
Under section 39(c), of Basic education 2013, the state mandated cabinet secretary for education to make regulations to prescribe how schools shall be classified.
This included how to impose new conditions and make exemptions where possible, which was the basis of starting the APBET run schools which targeted informal settlements.
Onyango who is also the head of St Williams APBET primary school at Otonglo centre, explained that they even admit street children at educate them for free.
Onyango disclosed that there are more than 200 pupils who are learning at his centre for free, after they got provisional APBET license to run the schools.
Onyango told the Saturday Standard that they used to get money from the FPE kitty since the schools identified with APBET programs. Others APBET schools, too, got FPE.