Roll out of the new curriculum put on hold- CS Amina announces

The new Curriculum will not be rolled out in January, 2019, as earlier indicated. This revelation was made today, Tuesday 11th December- 2018, by the Education Ministry’s Cabinet Secretary, Dr Amina Mohammed. According to Dr Amina enough preparations have not been put in place to allow the full implementation of the 2-6-6-3 Competency Based Curriculum, CBC, in term one of 2019. The Cabinet Secretary says extensive consultations between all stake holders have to be executed before the Curriculum is fully implemented. Of concern, also, is the unpreparedness of teachers who have not been adequately trained to implement the curriculum. Additionally, books for grades one to four have to be reviewed to ensure they have the right content for the learners.

“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, ” Dr Amina said while appearing before the Senate Committee on Education, today.

The postponement comes even as learners in grade one to three have been using the new curriculum materials; with those in grade three expecting to move to grade four. But, Dr Amina has assured all learners that they will not be affected by the postponement. “Those (Learners) who were to move to Grade 4 and were under the pilot phase (of the new curriculum) will instead move to Standard three. But, it will not affect their progress,” Dr Amina assured. The Cabinet Secretary later launched the Girls’ Education Challenge (DFID- GEC) and  Leave No Girl Behind Project in Nairobi.  The project is aimed at providing opportunities for nearly three hundred thousand girls, mostly from marginalized areas,  in Kenya to access 12 years of quality education by 2030.

The CS indicated that a new date for roll out of the curriculum will be announced in future, once wide evaluations have been done. The decision to postpone the implementation of the new Curriculum, in January 2019, was informed by an internal evaluation on the curriculum by the Ministry.

According to CS Amina, the education sector is grappling with a high number of teachers’ shortage. The shortage which affects both primary and secondary schools has hampered service delivery in the sector. “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 CS added.