This year’s students enrollment in public school has created some form of inconvenience to the learners, teachers and facilities as well.
For a long time now, Mangu High School has not seen a myriad of students getting admitted as like it has been done this year.
The school has kept its students number at 600.
They designed their classrooms, dormitories, laboratories, toilets and dining hall to accommodate exactly that said number.
Yet for a school that sits on 200 acres touching the Thika-Nairobi highway, and one that boasts such a rich and varied array of alumni in addition to posting consistently strong results, a student capacity of less than 1,000 seems conservative and unnecessarily inflexible.
The figure has been on the constant rise and this year’s has broken a record with an admission of about 1727 students.
To make the matters even worse, the infrastructures in the school are out of date. For instance, a classroom that was to contain 40 students now has up to 60 students.
A dormitory meant to accommodate 40 learners now hosts more than 100, leading to congestion, especially in the use of toilets and bathrooms.
The sitting capacity of the library has remained at 180, and there is only one resident nurse.
Yet Mang’u School is famous for the production of many towering technocrats and political heavyweights such as former president Mwai Kibaki, former minister Tom Mboya, George Saitoti, Moody Awori, John Michuki among others.
The question lingering the mind of many is, will the school continue with its trend of producing quality academics?
This comes few days after the heads of schools faulted the ministry of education for directing 100 percent transition yet not improving the facilities to accommodate all the students.