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Uncertainty clouds push for new education system

tablets

Pupils use tablets during a lesson. FILE PHOTO | NMG

A cloud of uncertainty is hanging over the new education curriculum, whose rollout continued to face operational and technical challenges long after the school year began and pupils went on the midterm break.

Top among the key challenges facing the system, meant to help the country shift from exam-driven to skills-based learning, is the aura of scepticism among the thousands of teachers charged with the task of implementing it and who seem unclear on what is expected of them.

The Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) has warned that the absence of logical order events in the journey of curriculum reform amounts to courting disaster.

“Right now teachers are not prepared to take pupils through the new curriculum which explains their opposition to it. They are not opposing it because they do not want it, rather because they do not understand it,” said Knut secretary-general Wilson Sossion.

Piloting of the competency-based curriculum (CBC), kicked off last year in 470 select schools, 10 from every county.

That has now been scaled up to cover pre-school as well as Grade One and Two countrywide.

A few Grade Three institutions are also taking part ahead of full implementation next year.

Teachers reckon that their task has been made even harder by the delayed release of course books for the new curriculum — paralysing teaching for half the term. The books only hit the bookshops ahead of the mid-term break.

School heads have, however, insisted that teachers have been adequately trained for the CBC and will be ready to impart knowledge to pupils when schools reopen.

Kenya Primary School Heads Association (Kepsha) chairman Shem Ndolo said he was yet to receive any complaints from teachers regarding the new curriculum.

“The teachers have been undergoing training since November 2017 and have capacity and knowledge to impart in learners,” he said.

The new competency-based curriculum, which bills itself as focused on skills rather than knowledge, is meant to fully replace the current 8-4-4 system in seven years.

Pupils in Class One and Two have had to endure learning without course books as publishers grappled with a printing backlog that delayed production and distribution of the learning materials.

READ: Learners get books for new curriculum

In the period preceding the midterm break, some teachers relied on course books for the 8-4-4 system, which is meant to be replaced by the CBC.

Mr Sossion, a nominated MP, said the national scale piloting is an illegality that follows a flopped piloting in 470 select schools.

“In the true sense of scientific process, piloting involves picking a few schools and testing them. What the government is doing is actually is a rollout,” he noted adding that the government was engaging in an illegal process since it had rolled out the new curriculum without a sessional paper that requires the adoption of Parliament.

“We are going on a fishing expedition by Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and government. We are not sure whether we will catch the fish,” he said.
Mr Sossion said the CBC flopped in Tanzania, Uganda, in the US and in Malaysia due to flawed implementation.

“We strongly believe that 8-4-4 is still the best system that should be sustained and the government should just engage in a review process so that we can customise several aspects being proposed in the CBC,” he said.

The new system provides that Class One and Two will be referred to as Grade One and Grade Two.

Initial plans were that the curriculum be implemented in Grade One to Three starting this year but this was later confined to Grades One and Two only.

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In December, Knut wrote the then Education secretary Fred Matiang’i warning that the “haphazard manner in which the reforms were being carried out had triggered a chain reaction, a clear confirmation of the missing link between the framers of the curriculum and the stakeholders”.

Knut said curriculum review process follows certain steps that must be fulfilled in a chronological order, otherwise, the end result would be flawed.

The first step is the needs assessment, followed by the selection of an appropriate innovation, developing a policy framework, curriculum design, piloting and finally a stakeholder’s conference before roll out. The rollout is then evaluated.

Throughout the process, there has to be a working consensus in support of curriculum reform among teachers, their unions, professionals in the field, quality assurance and standards officers, parents, religious leaders and other key stakeholders.

The curriculum changes should be consistent with government education policies and economic constraints.