Grade Four syllabus roll-out in January
The government yesterday announced that the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) for Grade Four pupils will be rolled out next year when schools re-open even as he told off trade unions over their opposition to its implementation.
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha assured parents and teachers implementation of the programme is on course and all measures had been put in place to ensure it succeeds.
“With regard to CBC we are prepared to roll out the Grade Four of the CBC come January 13 next year,” he said.
Speaking when he released the 2019 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KSCE) exam results, Magoha said text books on the new programme have been printed and distributed to all schools.
He said 97 per cent of the counties have received books while the remaining three per cent will be supplied with the textbooks before the schools re-open, and attributed delays in the distribution to bad weather conditions in many parts of the country.
Magoha said the ministry was training additional teachers to be deployed to various schools.
His assurances came hours after Teachers Service Commission (TSC) chairperson Nancy Macharia revealed that the commission this week started a massive training exercise for 106,320 teachers in preparation for the CBC roll-out.
They tutors include 7,000 Special Needs Education teachers and 18,000 teachers from private schools.
“I wish to assure the country that by the end of the exercise, the country will have 228,000 teachers trained on CBC. This means we have a critical mass of staff who will deliver the curriculum,” she said.
Magoha’s announcement came after the government successfully rolled out CBC for Grades One to Three this year with the aim of promoting skills acquisition and talent management.
The implementation was preceded by controversies during the launch of the pilot programme last year, with Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut)secretary general Wilson Sossion, raising questions about public participation and teachers training on CBC.
Move to the wining side
The Universities Academic Staff Union, led by its secretary general Constantine Wasonga, also had accused the government of hurriedly implementing the curriculum.It argued that haphazard implementation of CBC would affect quality of higher education.
But yesterday, Magoha told those opposing the new curriculum to move on, as it was “here to stay”. He added that the curriculum was not launched to benefit a few individuals, but to better the performance of children.
“I encourage everybody to help us move forward... we have to ensure rollout succeeds. Since I believe in God and because we have made efforts and we still have energy, who do you think you are when you say this will not work?
Get it from me this will work and my advice to you is that you move to the wining side,” he said.
The CS added that the government had revised the lowest pre-service teacher training qualification from Certificate (P1) to Diploma level in a bid to ensure there was sustainable capacity development of teachers under the CBC to improve the quality of education.
Magoha said the curriculum for the that level of training has already been completed and the new cohort of learners is expected to be admitted to various colleges next year.
