The government has supplied the last tranche of the 33 million text books to schools under a new strategy that has saved the exchequer Sh5 billion. A new status report on book distribution to schools shows that primary and secondary learners now have text books in all the subjects under the new plan started in January.
The plan, which is a departure from the previous system in which head teachers bought the text books, was meant to address concerns that the pupil-textbook ratio was as high as 5.1 in some schools in spite of government expenditure of Sh15 billion annually on the materials.
Yesterday, Early Learning and Basic Education PS Belio Kipsang said the government is happy that the 1:1 pupil-textbook ratio was being achieved. The brief on Government Textbooks Distribution Report (2018) was prepared by Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and shows book distribution status by close of this month. It emerged that 31 million textbooks had been distributed across 20,158 public schools by August 20, with the remaining books to be delivered by end of the month. The ministry procured the books at a cost of Sh7.6 billion in a new plan that saved taxpayers billions.
Kenya Literature Bureau (KLB), Oxford University Press (OUP), Moran East Africa, Longhorn Publishers and East African Educational Publishers (EAEP) were competitively picked in the distribution of books.
