Education CS George Magoha has announced that schools will reopen for Third Term on May 10 as had been scheduled before the president issued stricter Covid-19 containment measures.

President Uhuru Kenyatta had last month introduced fresh measures to tame the deadlier third wave of the pandemic, with many parents believing the third term would be affected.

“I am leapfrogging forward and hoping that since it looks like the pandemic is starting to flatten, there may be no need for now for me to summon education stakeholders to look afresh at the timetable,” said Prof Magoha.

He asserted, “It remains as we had decided earlier in the year.”

The CS was speaking on Monday after supervising the management of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination in Kiambu County.

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This comes as teachers across the country continue to get vaccinated for Covid-19, albeit slowly, with the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) setting up 622 vaccination centres.

Kenya’s Covid-19 positivity rate has remained above 10 per cent in the last month, way above the World Health Organisation proposal of 5 per cent and lower for at least 14 days to be considered to have flattened the virus curve.

Kenyatta, in his address in March, had warned that the third wave would peak in April with more than 2,500 confirmed infections set to be reported daily before flattening in Mid-May.

He at the time indefinitely suspended physical learning in all institutions in Kenya, save for candidates sitting their KCPE and KCSE exams as well as those in medical training centers.

The Head of State then banned air, sea and land movement into and out of Nairobi, Kiambu, Kajiado, Machakos, and Nakuru Counties, and now teachers and learners will have to be exempted from this order as schools reopen early May.

In 2021, learners are expected to attend 4 school terms and not the normal 3 to cover for the lost year in 2020 when the pandemic struck.

In the new calendar, learners will break for a week marking the end of Term 3 on July 16, then resume for Term 1 on July 26.

They will break for one week on October 2 and open on October 11 for Term 2 that will terminate on December 23.

Come 2022, learners will have to accommodate four terms paving way for a resumption of the normal three-term school year from January 2023.