The official rollout of the new education curriculum has been put on hold to give room for more preparation and the training of teachers.
The push means that millions of pupils in lower classes, who have been learning under the 2-6-3-3-3 system, will revert to the 8-4-4 system next year. The learning materials which parents bought in anticipation of the new system will likely go to waste.
Appearing before the Senate Education Committee, Cabinet Secretary for Education Amina Mohamed said implementation of the Competence Based Curriculum is important, but it cannot be rushed.
“The curriculum is great, the design is great, but we need to ensure that that all the stakeholders are comfortable before the rollout is done and as per now, we are not ready. We will need to have a conference with all the stakeholders and agree on the rollout date because we want to ensure that everything is in place, the training of teachers, the infrastructure and of course making sure that the books are the right ones, ”Mohamed said.
Mohamed and the ministry’s Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang said the education docket is still facing challenges especially teacher shortage that needs to be addressed to avoid causing discomfort to the pupils once the transition takes place.
“The worst thing that can happen is for us to roll out something that we are not all comfortable with especially parents because these are their children who are being introduced to a new curriculum. A little discomfort is acceptable but huge discomfort is unacceptable,” she added.
“We have a shortage of 34,000 and 87, 000 teachers in primary and secondary schools respectively, an issue that needs attention before the transition .”
The pilot project that saw over 20,000 teachers trained has been ongoing for grade 1, 2 and 3 since its inception this year.
According to Kipsang those who were in grade 3 will just go back to normal system and join standard 4 until the roll out is done.
“Technically nobody is going to grade 4 on this curriculum because what we were doing was just piloting in class 1 and 2 and 3 so there should be no big problem,” Kipsang said.