Azimio gives taskforce free lessons on new system
Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition is accusing the Government of clawing back the gains made in the education sector and creating unnecessary confusion.
National Assembly Leader of Minority Opiyo Wandayi said the Kenya Kwanza Government is reversing decisions made by then President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration. He says President William Ruto played an integral role in these decisions and cannot distance himself from them.
Wandayi claimed the Government does not have a clear plan to implement the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC).
“It is an affront to the sovereignty of the Kenyan people when out of bile and grandstanding, an arbitrary reversal is made on the decision made by Kenyans through their elected representatives in the past administration that ushered in the CBC for and on behalf of the people,” said Wandayi.
The opposition coalition said the government must cease experimenting with the children of the poor and rise to the occasion and give clear guidelines and long-term solutions for implementation of CBC that ensure the learners are best equipped.
He said that when CBC was introduced, there was a general understanding and a government policy that learners who complete primary education in Grade Six would transition to Junior High School (JSS) for three years. The transition was expected to be to another institution.
According to him, it was expected that institutions where these learners would transition to would be identified, set up and equipped for smooth transition.
He said that stakeholders were guided in preparation and some have invested heavily and would be negatively affected by the unexpected reversal of this policy. Primary schools, he said, are ill-equipped in terms of infrastructure, laboratories and facilitators who need to be retooled.
“Governments exist in succession and they are to build upon the existing national foundations. The Kenya Kwanza government would have been best advised when drawing its education charter for CBC so as not to bring confusion,” Wandayi explained.
He said the 49-member working party on education reform was largely drawn from developers of the Kenya Kwanza manifesto. Its main job was to look into the challenges facing CBC in a bid to strengthen it and provide solutions.
He said JSS should catapult learners to new levels of learning where they are trained and assessed differently from the 8-4-4 model. On the outcry on workload, Wandayi said parents have had to carry out the learners’ assignments and, whereas this was intended to build better parent-child relationships, it has instead caused strife.
“The hidden costs associated with CBC have children from poor backgrounds discriminated against when compared with children of the rich,” he said.
