enroll the teen mothers in schools, orders Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed

Teenage pregnancies were highly recorded last year among the candidates. The Ministry of Education has directed secondary school heads to enhance support services to help young mothers selected to their schools to enroll and focus on learning.

Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed said the ‘re-entry policy’ must guide school principals and head teachers to admit, accommodate and support returning students. Last year, MS Mohamed directed Education officials in all counties to map out the Standard Eight candidates who became mothers before national exams and make special arrangements for them to join Form One, ”This data is now available and special focus will be paid to these young mothers.”

She expressed disappointment over low enrolment of Form One students in six counties;Mombasa, Lamu, Kwale, Samburu, Isiolo and Tana River and launched a campaign to have 130,000 students who are yet to report to school enroll, ”This low enrolment rate is unacceptable at this point in the transition process. These ‘special’ counties will therefore be the ministry’s point of first intensive focus.”

A rapid analysis of the reasons for the failure to hit the 100 per cent admission mark shows that there have been challenges arising from teenage pregnancies, early marriages, insecurity, inhibitive cultural practices, indirect costs of secondary education and extreme poverty in households, especially in arid and semi-arid areas.

The ministry has prepared data packets bearing actual names and location of the students yet to report;”We shall leave no child behind. This data will be shared with local administrators who will team up with Directors from the Ministry in this final push,” said Ms. Mohamed who was accompanied by PS Belio Kipsang at Arya Girls High School in Nairobi.

The CS said the Ministry has realized an 87 per cent Form One reporting rate which means that 895,987 students have now fully enrolled into Form One; ”Although this enrolment is seven percentage points better than last year, the Ministry is determined to do all everything possible to realize 100 per cent transition.”

Data indicate that Murang’a County has the highest transition rate of 97 per cent. Majority of the Counties, have recorded transition rates above 80percent. From the current NEMIS data, 640 candidates have opted to repeat class eight while 2,299 have joined vocational colleges.

 

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