Tharaka Nithi County Director of Education (CDE) Ms. Bridget Wambua has associated the dwindling enrolment of learners in public schools to the declining number of children being born while the schools remained many and close together.
Responding to media reports about Nyagakairu primary school in the county that is at the verge of closing down due to low enrolment, the CDE said several public schools including some day secondary schools have quite low learners at the moment.
Ms. Wambua said Nyagakairu Primary School in Magumoni ward that has only three pupils was very close to other public primary schools with one being less than a kilometre away and hence the low population.
“There are quite a number of other public schools with at least one in each Sub-county with an enrollment of less than 20 learners including some day secondary schools due to the fact that the community built many schools yet the number of new born children is going down,” noted the County Education boss.
Though agreeing that it is uneconomical to run schools with such enrolment numbers, Ms. Wambua said the mandate of staffing schools laid with the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and hence she was not in a position to know how many teachers were in each school.
She was addressing the media in her office in Chuka town today. She said the trend of enrollment into public primary schools was going down but she believed that this was not only in Tharaka Nithi but possibly in other parts of the county.
The CDE was quick to elaborate that the low enrolment was not affecting public boarding schools which have admitted learners from not only beyond the locality but even other counties.
By David Mutwiri
