Mwiki Primary School head teacher in Ruiru constituency, Kiambu County has appealed for construction of more classrooms at the populous school to alleviate overcrowding crisis that could cripple learning operations.
The institution which managed to admit it’s 15 year 2018 KCPE candidates to national schools has 67 teachers employed by Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and three more who under parent’s association payroll.
“We therefore have a shortage of five more permanent teachers to effectively handle the huge population of this school,” he said.
The current KCPE candidates are 715 who have been distributed in 12 classrooms.
Speaking at the institution after area MP Simon King’ara handed five classrooms built by NG-CDF funds, Kamau said that the new block will only alleviate the challenge slightly.
“The recent ones that were constructed courtesy of area NG-CDF and which have a capacity of accommodating 300 pupils will alleviate the problem just slightly,”
Despite the huge population and overcapacity dare, Kamau said that the school has picked up very well especially on Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) which the government commenced implementing in pre-primary One and pre-primary Two (PP1 and 2) and Grades 1, 2 and 3.
“We are not complaining. We have well trained teachers, enough books distributed in the ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 depending on the subjects for class six to class eight pupils but our major problem is classrooms and space,” he said.
The school enjoys a space of 86 by 84 meters and going by the fact that the institution is surrounded by buildings and a larger outside population, the school management has to work closely with local administration to avert insecurity.
MP King’ara promised to work with the school in search of a new, spacious land in the neighborhood where new public primary schools would be built to reduce congestion at Mwiki Primary.
He castigated school managements for extorting parents whose children are admitted newly in different schools.
“This has been an impediment and indeed many parents are unable to take their children to school over inflated admission fees that are accompanied by fishy demands such as desk fees. I will engage the ministry concerned to have a uniform entry fee for all schools,” he said.