Capitation for Junior Secondary School will be managed by special sub-committees operating under the guidance of the respective primary schools' Board of Management.

Nyeri County Director of Education Sabina Aroni said once registered, primary schools hosting JSS will be required to set up sub-committees through which the resources will be administered.

She noted that the change in the management of funds for this level followed the acknowledgement that Junior Secondary Schools was distinct from primary school.

“The guidelines to be used to operationalise Junior Secondary School have already been developed and publicised. The primary schools' Board of Management will now be required to form a JSS sub-committee which will deal with the management of Junior Secondary School. But with time, the ministry will give guidelines on what will happen in future,” said Ms Aroni.

Ms Aroni was speaking to KNA as the county entered day three of the Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) aimed at assessing the capacity of primary and private secondary schools to host junior secondary. The exercise targets 32,000 private and public primary schools where the 1,287,579 Grade Six students will be domiciled under JSS.Ms Aroni said that by Tuesday, 109 out of the 500 private and public primary schools in the county had been assessed, adding that the exercise will be completed by next Wednesday to pave way for registration of qualifying schools.

“Apart from assessment of private and public primary schools' readiness to host JSS, other major preparations include re-tooling teachers who will handle the students in Junior Secondary,” said Aroni.

“As a legal obligation, schools that meet 75 per cent of the ministry's set requirements will also be re-registered under the new 2-6-3-3 system of education.

"When we give certificates to schools, we state the system of education and at the moment most of them are registered under the 8-4-4 system,” she added.

The country’s first ever lot of Grade 7 students who wrote their Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) last year are expected to join JSS on January 30.