Tana River County Director of Education Khalif Hassan has urged students who have registered for KCSE and are out of school to return before the start of the examinations.
The Director said many students have developed the culture of registering for national exams and then fail to attend classes.
Tana River has 1063 candidates in the 2021 KCSE examinations compared to 1672 who were registered in 2020, a decline of 609.
“Many students who had registered for KCSE in Tana River are out of schools, they registered and left schools. According to school principals, it has been the tradition for students to register and disappear,’’ said Khalif Hassan in his Hola office.
He added that parents and chiefs are an important cog in the education sector and should be at the forefront to trace the absentee students.
“As the department of education working in tandem with TSC we are appealing to teachers to look for the candidates’ registered in their schools,’’ said Khalif.
He issued a stern warning to students who are in Form-three and are scheduled to sit for the national exams in 2022 that they will not allow them to register and abscond classes.
Madogo Division, he said, has many out-of-school students. He advised parents to take their children to nearby Day secondary schools.
Last year, UNICEF partnered with the Ministry of Education to get 4,806 out-of-school children in Tana River County back to class in a Sh25 million programme.