Systemic hitches might foil curriculum roll-out — KICD
Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohammed, her Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang (left) and KICD CEO Dr Julius Jwan addressing the media at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development offices in Nairobi on October 3, 2018. PHOTO | DENNIS ONSONGO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
Among the challenges that are threatening the roll-out of the new curriculum area is lack of proper training of teachers who will be involved in the roll-out.
The government will have to go back to the drawing board on implementation of a new curriculum next year after the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) identified several gaps in the ongoing piloting of the new system just a few months to its roll-out.
The report, which came out two weeks ago, was presented to Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed in Nairobi, and who disclosed that a team of international experts has been brought in to give their input before the roll-out.
“The Ministry wishes to triangulate our internal Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) pilot findings with other international experts. As a result, we have commissioned an external evaluation to generate comparative findings on our state of preparedness for a full CBC roll-out,” said Ms Mohamed.
The CS, who was speaking at Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) after meeting members of the curriculum steering committee, said the government expects the findings to be made available to them shortly.
The new curriculum will be rolled out next year from Grade One to Grade Three while those in Class Four will continue with the piloting and which will now cover all schools and not just 235 primary schools.
Among the challenges that are threatening the roll-out of the new curriculum area is lack of proper training of teachers who will be involved in the roll-out.
“Some teachers are struggling with the concept and lacked the capacity demanded by the new curriculum,” adds the report. Schools also do not have learning materials for the roll-out. It also emerged that learning in Class Four could be thrown into crisis, as KICD is yet to develop curriculum design for the class.
"These pupils are not sure which system they will be using in learning due to failure by KICD to develop curriculum design and allow publishers to come up with books. It’s a big crisis as the books cannot be ready by January,” said a member of the steering committee.
“At today’s meeting, we received results of an internal of evaluation of the CBC that was completed two weeks ago. I am happy to note that indicators of evaluation based on the evaluation report have shown good results, although we have room for improvement,” said Ms Mohamed.
She went on: “Some of the key findings from the preliminary report tabled today are that: Our overall quality of CBC implementation, based on international benchmarks, is 56 per cent. The minimum threshold set out for global standards for such an exercise is 50 per cent. This means that our quality of implementation during the pilot phase is currently six percentage points above the international benchmark.”
She said the actual teacher assessment feedback based on learners’ achievement is currently at 50 per cent. “The quality of the learning environment and support for the CBC stands at 62 per cent. The quality of learning and teaching currently stands at 62 per cent,” said Ms Mohamed.
