University applicants flock Maarifa Centre to revise Courses.

 By Dennis Kipkirui

Students selected by the Joint Admission Board (JAB) to study various courses flocked to Maarifa Centre yesterday to apply and revise their career courses in an attempt to beat the May 31^st deadline. They were enthusiastic to use the ICT facilities in the Centre to revise their choices. They acknowledged that Arid Lands Information Network (ALIN) had contributed tremendously to their community since they would have traveled far access internet service or worse still travel up to Nairobi to do the revision. They started thronging to the Centre as early as 7am and by 10 am the officials in the Centre were forced to design a mechanism of ensuring that the former high school students were served quickly and satisfactorily to reduce the back log.

The Centre was a beehive of activities when the former K.C.S.E students came in large numbers. A number of them had sought for permission in different schools where they are serving as untrained teachers employed by the Parents Teachers Association (PTA).

They received invaluable information from the officers in the centre who were at hand to receive and serve them.  However, most of them found it difficult to feed in the required information since the details they had were conflicting with the one contained in the JAB database. Among the situations witnessed include cases of the prospective university students providing the birth certificate details asked for by the JAB website while in actual sense their head teachers had not submitted them while registering for the K.C.S.E. Others include those who came to revise their courses only to find that their former schools did not submit their initial registration and had to start again.

University applicants revise courses using online service at Maarifa Centre

For those who could not complete the process because of different challenges, officers in the centre assisted them in drafting and sending e-mails to inquire where the problem was. The response received varied from instant solution being provided to some being told to travel to the University of Nairobi’s main campus to have their cases handled there.

Most of the applicants who spoke to Laikipia Rural Voices (LRV)   journalist applied business related courses while some found it comfortable to apply teaching courses. For some, it was an uphill task comprehending what the courses matching their subject clusters entailed. Lucky enough, they received adequate information from the Maarifa Centre on the details of those courses. 

They were optimistic that JAB will consider them for the courses applied for and looked forward to joining the university to purse them. However, JAB will have to consider their choices first and get back to them after 31^st of May. The feedback will range from admission on the courses chosen or the need for some to revise their choices. The Centre closed as late as 8pm after serving all of them.