The Ministry of Education has changed the opening date of Term three from August 26 to September 2 to allow the National Population and Housing exercise to run without interruption.
In a circular issued on Friday, Principal Secretary for Early Learning and Basic Education Dr Belio Kipsang said the census date coincided with the opening of the school.
“For the upcoming census to be successful, it is the desire of the National Statistics Bureau that there is a minimum population movement so that they get as many people as possible at the convention,” he said.
National Census exercises have been scheduled for the night of August 24 and August 25, 2019 to August 31, 2019.
DATE OF OPENING
The change in opening date has shortened the third term by one week.
Dr Kipsang directed all regional and district education directors to notify all schools and colleges about changes in opening dates.
The third term is always full of activities including national exams, Kenya Basic Education Certificate (KCPE), Kenya Secondary Examination Certificate (KCSE) and third level Kenya Early Years Assessment (Keya).
The KCPE exam will take place between October 29 and 31.
The exercises will be conducted on 28 October while the 2019 KCSE exams will take place between 21 October and 27 November.
This year, the Kenya National Examination Board (KNEC) has registered 1.78 million candidates for the 2019 exam.
Of the students enrolled, 1,089,671 were KCPE candidates while 698,935 students were KCSE candidates in 10,304 examination centers.
The Keya assessment will take place in October.
ELIMINATE
The change in school opening date follows a request by the Kenya National Static Bureau (KNBS) for more time during this year’s National Census.
KNBS has written a letter to the Secretary of the education Cabinet proposing that the school opening date be encouraged from 26 August or 2 September.
There is concern that many people will lose the National Census exercise because many parents, students and teachers will travel on the weekend of August 24 in preparation for the third term.
In Kenya, the National Census takes place after every 10 years. The last time the exercise was done was in 1999.
There are around 8.8 million in primary schools and 2.6 million students in secondary schools according to data from KNBSs.
The third term will end on October 25.