Secondary schools to trim bloated support staff

Secondary schools will need to cut their non-teaching staff in a government plan to reduce the fees burden.

Preliminary investigations by a government taskforce show that a large number of secondary schools have bloated support staff.

The recommendations of the taskforce will guide the ministry on setting the optimum secondary school fees amid concerns that the current rates are locking the poor from post-primary education.

“In some schools the number of non-teaching staff is relatively high hence contributing to the high cost of school fees,” read the interim report from the committee.

The taskforce is recommending the support staff to handle multiple roles and lower schools wage bill.

“The driver can act a messenger too while the cateress can serve as the matron in the school,” it stated.

Non-teaching staff in public secondary schools used to be paid by the government, but this changed in 1993 and the responsibility was transferred to the Boards of Governors (BOGs).

This gave room for school authorities to increase the number of support staff. The taskforce wants staff to be employed on contract terms and schools outsource functions such as security, repairs and maintenance and cleaning.

It also wants non-teaching staff working in income-generating ventures like bakeries and farms owned by schools to be paid from sales generated from the businesses and not fees.

The size of support staff will also be capped depending on whether the school is day or boarding and number of streams. A day school with a single stream will have a maximum of six support staff while boarding schools will be capped at 10.
A day school with a four streams will have a maximum of 13 non-teaching workers while boarding schools will be capped at 28.

The taskforce is led by former assistant minister Kilemi Mwiria and is expected to hand in the final report in July.

A number of bright students who secured Form One admission to national schools this year opted to join low-ranked county and district schools because their parents cannot raise annual fees running to as much as Sh130,000.

The Kenya National Association of Parents (KNAP) said the national schools had increased fees by about 100 per cent in the recent past in breach of Education ministry regulations, prompting the formation of the taskforce.

Since 2008, the government has been providing a payment-per-student grant of Sh10,265 to all public schools.

The amount covers tuition, operations and maintenance which include paying wages for the basic number of non-teaching staff and basic amenities.

Students in boarding schools, however, have a higher capitation of Sh18,627, with the committee noting that public schools have over time continued to charge high levies thus making secondary education unaffordable especially to poor households.

To address this challenge, the taskforce will determine the realistic unit cost of secondary education taking into account all relevant education inputs.

The inputs include teaching and learning materials, teaching staff, non-teaching staff, infrastructure needs, boarding costs, operational and maintenance costs among others.