The Ministry of Education (MoE)through Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu has admitted that there is lack of 15,021 classes meant to host the first group of Grade 9 learners from the start of January 2025.
Machogu was speaking this on Wednesday 20, March 2024 while appearing before the Senate to responding to the State preparation to accommodate the Grade 9 learners from next year.
The CS said that the ministry has done its informed assessment and determined that there is an existing shortage of 15,021 classrooms to be used by the learners that will be transitioning into Grade 9 in 2025.
He also said through his leadership under the ministry has done a calculation on the number of classrooms required countrywide as per county.
Machogu gave assurance to the Senate that everything is in place when it comes to the infrastructural requirement for transitioning of learners to grade 9 next year, 2025,.
The CS revealed that the government has allocated a conditional grant of Sh3.39 billion to the NG-CDF , money that is being distributed across the constituencies meant for availing infrastructural resources.
He added that the conditional grant associated with these funds will be used to build classrooms to fill the gap that is currently evident.
The conditions given by CDF in matching this funding from their allocation is that such that the successful building of one classroom using this fund will determine the success of getting funds to build another classrooms.
Through the ministry of Education, machogu said that the government is planning to do 6000 integrated resource centres for Junior school
He further revealed that the government had earlier engaged the World Bank and got an allocation of Sh9 billion,money that will be used to construct another 9,000 classrooms.

Junior school learners during reporting to grade 7 ;Image/Courtesy
According to data from the ministry, JSS schools across the country currently under grade 7 and 8 have an enrolment of 2, 279, 052 learners.