Treasury has kicked off a multi-billion shilling school upgrading project to set up a model secondary school in every Constituency in a bid to boost the faltering quality of learning and access to the country's best schools.

The government on Wednesday invited bids for the construction of secondary schools as centres of excellence, a project, announced by Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta in June, expected to cost Sh6 billion--or Sh30 million per constituency.

To start with 55 constituencies will have new schools built on sites which have already been identified by Constituency Development Fund (CDF) Committees while the remaining 145 have picked existing schools for upgrading.

Education officials said the project is meant to ensure that each constituency has a school with quality facilities and status akin to that of the 19 national secondary schools in the country.

The argument is that this would give all children an equal opportunity to access quality schools considering that the best schools are currently unevenly distributed across regions.

"Its better to have one school with quality facilities in every constituency than 10 with limited infrastructure which only conspire to defeat quality education," said Cleophas Tirop, the chairman of Kenya Secondary School Heads Association.

"If the plan is well executed devoid of politics, this will be a milestone to ensuring access to quality education. Over the years, only 3,000 students--out of the over 700,000 primary school leavers get positions in the existing national schools.

Whereas only one school will be upgraded in every constituency in the first phase, there is a plan to rope in more institutions in the future.

"Thereafter, considering the availability of funds, other secondary schools will be upgraded in phase two, " said Treasury in a tender invitation notice.

The choice of schools to be upgraded into centers of excellence has been a subject of conflict among leaders in various regions who have disagreed on what institutions or new sites should be picked.

Education analysts say past Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results have revealed dwindling performance in public secondary schools mostly in rural areas.

This has been blamed on general neglect, strained facilities and a perception among Kenyans that boarding schools are better as compared to Day schools.

Successful implementation of the project, analysts said will be a boost to the subsidised secondary education plan introduced two years ago which is still reeling from take-off blues, even after consuming at least Sh15 billion.

"We want to focus more on improving quality as well as greater access to secondary education," Education PS Prof Karega Mutahi said.