Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST) lecturer,Henry Onderi, has faulted the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology's criteria of selecting form one candidates.
Onderi who is also the Director of JOOUST Kisii Campus lamented that the criteria terming it discriminative and unfair to children from disadvantaged backgrounds, majority of whom attend public primary schools.
Speaking on Thursday afternoon in his Kisii Office, as the launch of the form one selection kicked off in Nairobi, Onderi challenged the Ministry of Education to adopt a fair and equitable affirmative action criteria in the selection process to ensure all qualified candidates get admissions to national schools on merit without being judged as per where they come from.
Onderi suggested that the ministry should embrace a selection process based on the ratio of candidates in public and private schools. He said taking 5 best candidates from every sub-county to join national schools may not be fair as it was possible for the best 5 to come from private schools or the same school.
"As an educationalist and a parent, I feel the ministrys' selection criteria is not fair to the Kenyan children, especially those from public primary schools at sub-county levels, where the ministry has allocated only five slots for national schools admissions, meaning best performing candidates from public primary schools could be locked out since it is possible for the best five national schools slots to go to either private schools or the same school," stated Onderi.
The lecturer concurs with the Kenya Private Schools Association (KPSA) which has rejected the revised selection criteria, which according to KPSA discriminates candidates based on schools where they sat their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) national examinations without taking merit into consideration.
KPSA chief executive officer, Peter Ndolo, has been quoted in the sections of the media lamenting KCPE candidates have been favoured in the form one selection process to the disadvantage of their private schools counterparts.