430,000 P.7 leavers to get free education

 By Conan Businge 

The  Government plans to offer free secondary education to 430,000 students under the Universal Secondary Education programme.

The assistant commissioner for secondary education, Francis Agula, disclosed this during an exclusive interview with New Vision on Tuesday.

This is about 80% of the 535,500 pupils who sat for last year’s PLE.

According to the USE requirements, students must score between aggregate 4 and 28 to be eligible for free secondary or vocational education. This means the remaining 103,000 students will miss out on  the Government’s scholarships. 

However, such pupils can join private schools, or those aided by the Government but not under the free education scheme. 

Agula said the Government has already made a provision for the 430,000 pupils who will be joining any of the USE schools or the vocational institutions. 

Today, there are about 690,000 students getting free secondary school education in the country. 

The Government started free secondary education in 2007, almost 10 years after free primary education was introduced. In 2007, when the programme started, 161,396 students were enrolled. 

In 2008, 165,758 joined Senior One; another 160,113 in 2009, while 201,990 students joined in 2010. Last year, 360,215 students were admitted under the free secondary education programme. 

With 430,000 students set to benefit from free post-primary education this year, it means the Government has increased the intake by 19%. 

Most of the students will be admitted to USE schools and the rest to vocational institutions for free education. 

The new report shows that there are 1,641 schools implementing free secondary education up from 1,488 schools as per last year’s headcount.

Of these, 902 are government-aided and 739 are privately owned under the public private partnership. Each student under the programme in private schools is allocated sh47,000 per term while those in Government-aided schools get sh41,000.