School heads have been asked to prepare for the intake of Form 1 and Grade 7 students in January.
Education CS George Magoha urged them to liaise with the directors to ensure smooth enrolment.
Magoha spoke at Moi Girls Isinya where he commissioned a Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) classroom.
“We have to normalise as we go into double intake otherwise it’s going to be a challenge going forward,” he said.
On the double intake in secondary schools, about 1.6 million learners will be enrolled in Grade 7.
Another 1.2 million learners will also be enrolled in Form 1.
Magoha said the two national exams will go on as planned in November.
The first cohort of Grade 6 learners will sit Kenya Primary School Education Assessment on November 28.
Magoha also extended the deadline for the selection of junior secondary schools.
The initial deadline had been slated for August 30 but was pushed to September 10.
“We started late, we have had hiccups in some areas therefore we have decided to extend the school selection timeline,” he said.
Despite the extension of the deadline, several parents are still confused, in terms of selection.
This has seen some schools direct parents to discuss the choice of schools with their children.
Once the learner has the list of schools, they are asked to submit it to the class teacher.
“Submit a list of schools selected, the teacher will help you conduct the placement process on the KNEC portal,” read a message from a teacher.
The teachers also want parents to pick schools within their home counties.
This is to ensure the learners go to day schools and not boarding schools.
According to a list sent to school heads, Nairobi has the highest number of approved private schools.
It has 142 schools followed by Kiambu with 114 schools.
The list gives the number of classes in each school together with the classroom capacity and the number of students.
Nairobi has 60,359 slots for students in private schools, followed by Kiambu with 22,665 slots.
Several counties have less than 10 approved schools, which means more students in the selected counties will go to public schools.
Elgeyo Marakwet, Turkana and Samburu have one school, while Narok and Kericho have two approved schools.
Magoha said for a school to offer junior secondary, it should have a laboratory for sciences and storage cabinets.