This archive report was first published on 15 July 2020.
On July 15, 2020, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha announced that the 2020 academic calendar had been re-organized, with learning set to resume in January 2021.
However, Kenya National Union of Teachers Secretary General Wilson Sossion has dismissed this proposal, stating that forcing students to repeat classes would lead to psychological torture.
"You will create a problem, psychological torture and things that will not work, let us not experiment and when people are putting forward a theory that has not been tested and they call it a professional observation that is fundamentally wrong and therefore we begin from where we stopped and we will move," Sossion explained.
Instead, Sossion proposed a change in the academic calendar, suggesting that exams would be conducted in July or August 2021, and the academic year would end around the same time.
He also proposed that a new academic year should begin in September 2021, preceded by a short break.
Magoha and other education stakeholders have stated that the decision to reopen schools in January 2021 is based on the assumption that the infection curve will have flattened by December.
