As Junior Secondary School studies take off on January 30, special needs learners will benefit from pre-vocational curriculum leading to skills qualification.
This group of students will be introduced to communication, numeracy, and ICT skills.
Learners with severe autism, the deaf and blind plus those with intellectual and multiple disabilities will benefit from the pre-vocational content as part of the CBC studies that focus on work competence.
“A pre-vocational level curriculum is provided for learners who are unable to undertake the regular or adapted curricula,” the new JSS guidelines read.
“Learners who are not able to follow the regular curriculum shall follow the stage-based pathway and curriculum which is pegged on achievement of identified milestones rather than the age of the learner.”
The learners will have 40 lessons a week of eight daily starting from 8am to 3:30pm Monday to Friday.
Time allocated for every lesson will depend on the completion and mastery of specific tasks.
Apart from the pre-vocational areas, others are physical and health, daily living, communication, and social skills, environmental activities, hygiene, nutrition, and safety. Later, learners will be introduced to consumer rights, including pricing, quality of products and weights.
The learners will also be taught mathematical activities, music and movement, and social studies. Religious education will be picked based on faith of the learner.
Junior secondary learning has been launched with many grey areas, forcing observers to raise questions about school fees, uniforms, facilities such as laboratories and libraries and the number of teachers.
It is estimated that there will be 30,000 JSS teachers to be spread across 32,000 learning centres across the country. The junior secondary classes will be based at primary schools and are expected to share facilities like laboratories with the neighbouring usual secondary schools.
Despite the gaps, the programme has taken off as the last Class Eight exams (KCPE) will be administered at the end of the year for the last time, signalling the phasing out of 8-4-4 system after about four decades.
