Nairobi — Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) on Monday embarked on an exercise to sensitize school heads on how to guide candidates on selecting courses to study in colleges and universities.
The first batch of 400 secondary school principals from Kitui County have been lined up in the exercise that will be concluded in the region this week.
KUCCPS targets to train 130 principals from Kitui Central, Kitui West, Matinyani, Lower Yatta and Katulani sub-counties.
KUCCPS Chief Executive Officer Dr. Agnes Mercy Wahome and top county officials from the Ministry of Education, Teachers Service Commission, Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association (KESSHA), and the County Government of Kitui will attend the workshop.
“The aim is to enable the principals to effectively guide the 2021 KCSE candidates who, besides preparing for the national examination, have been selecting the degree and TVET courses they wish to pursue,” Wahome said.
Similar workshops have been held at Chuluni Girls Secondary School, AIC Sombe Girls Secondary School, Mwingi Boys Secondary School, Kyuso Boys secondary school and Mutomo Girls Secondary School.
Last month, KUCCPS conducted a similar sensitisation workshop for principals in Isiolo County, where more than 200 students from ten secondary schools were trained.
The sensitization programme comes days after the course placement body opened course applications for candidates sitting for the 2021 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) candidates set to sit for their exams in March 2022.
KUCCPS has announced over 546-degree programs with an additional 218 college courses and 114 certificate courses in an automated process.
The placement body embarked on an aggressive sensitisation of secondary school principals following concerns that many secondary schools continually failed to submit their candidates’ choices of universities and colleges, hence costing them a chance to access government sponsorship to tertiary education institutions.
Out of the 10,437 secondary schools that presented KCSE candidates last year only 2,506 (24%) completed the centre application.
According to the Placement body, the courses with low or zero intake face rejection due to insufficient information.
In 2020 placement degree placement, details indicate that 16 programmes offered across 10 universities did not receive a single application despite there being over 90,000 potential students.
Candidates in the schools that failed to do the application lost an opportunity for career guidance, and possibly placement to courses of their choice.
Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha last year regretted that a number of high schools were not ensuring that their candidates apply for courses in universities.