Why are classrooms crowded when we have enough
teachers?
By MUNGAI KIHANYA
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
10 January 2016
About twenty years ago when I was a university lecturer, we encountered
an interesting problem at our department. Because of large numbers of
students, our copy typist (this was long before computers invaded the
Kenyan office space!) was overwhelmed by the workload – typing students’
handouts, test papers and the like.
So our head of department put in a request for one more typist and a
strange thing happened: the administration posted the required person
but did not supply an additional typewriter! Of course the speed of work
did NOT increase – in fact it deteriorated as the two typists now spent
a lot of time talking.
I remembered this story because of the protests I received from several
teachers after they read my piece last week. One of them put it this
way: “Are those figures you gave from
I agree with this teacher about class populations. In the school where I
am a member of the board, we have about 750 students and 39 teachers.
The P/T ratio is about 20. Yet if you go to the classrooms, you will
find an average of 45 pupils. So, our teachers are overloaded.
I visited one of the national high schools last week and the story I was
told provides the answer. The school has 1,300 students and about 70
teachers. When you do the math, the P/T ratio comes to a very admirable
18.6. But when you go to the classroom, you find about 50 to 60 pupils
in each.
The Deputy Principal who was taking me around mentioned that the school
is registered by the ministry of education as a seven-stream institution
but they only have six classrooms per form. In total they have 24 class
rooms where all the 1,300 pupils learn.
Luckily, this school received a grant from the government to build an
additional 8 classroom and this should ease the pressure. They will
bring down the population per class to about 40 pupils.
But unfortunately, it is very likely that some bright fellow at Jogoo
House will argue that the school has an addition two streams (8
classrooms) and hike up the registration status from 7 to 9 streams!
Such a move will take the school back to square one!
From the data available in the Basic Education Statistical Booklet
(2014), it is clear that we have enough teachers. What we are lacking
are classrooms in which to teach. It is similar to the getting an extra
typist but not a typewriter.
In short: we must build more classrooms urgently. Regrettably, the
authors of the Basic Education Statistical Booklet did not recognise
this as a problem; it is not mentioned in their list of recommendations.
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