Some of the Kenya Private Schools Association members during their annual conference in Mombasa in April 2019. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP The closure will force parents into the unenviable arduous task of searching for alternative schools for their children.
The ten-month closure will destroy careers and have a huge impact on families.
Hundreds of employees working in private schools have been forced to take salary cuts, ordered to take unpaid leave or laid off.
Some private schools may not reopen in January as most of them have run out of money due to prolonged closure of the institutions.
The closure will force parents into the unenviable arduous task of searching for alternative schools for their children.
The last four months have been challenging for private schools as they have been starved of their main source of income (school fees) and their situation is expected to worsen in the coming six months. The ten-month closure will destroy careers and have a huge impact on families.
Hundreds of employees working in private schools have been forced to take salary cuts, ordered to take unpaid leave or laid off. While focus has mainly been on teachers, the auxiliary staff that includes drivers, cooks, cleaners, watchmen, caregivers and finance staff have lost their livelihoods as their services are no longer required with the learners away from school. It is estimated that private schools directly employ about 300,000 people.
CRISIS
“We don’t know what will happen. I don’t know how people will survive this crisis as only the staff deemed extremely essential are occasionally asked to go to carry out specific duties and are paid for days they work. The rest of us were forced to take leave in April,” a manager at a private school in Nairobi told the Sunday Nation.
Proprietors of private schools are in dilemma over how to pay salaries for hundreds of teachers and non-teaching staff in the wake of coronavirus pandemic.
Kenya Private Schools Association (KPSA) national secretary Charles Ochome said most private institutions are struggling to meet operational costs.Parents who owe the institutions millions of shillings are withholding payments in a wait-and-see game due to the pandemic while others have already lost their jobs.The proprietor of private schools are asking for Sh7 billion grant to pay teachers and maintain learning institutions. CLOSE SCHOOLS "The Covid-19 pandemic came abruptly and we had to close schools. You know we […]