Address CBC grey areas with a degree of satisfaction

Once again, it is back to school for a new academic year, after a 10-week vacation characterised with fun and merrymaking for learners and heavy spending for parents.

Often, this vacation is leaves many in financial struggles, this time made even worse by prevailing hard economic times. However, whatever it takes, learners—most of whom are advancing to the next grade—will get back to class this week and in the coming fortnight.

While the learning progress is clear for most classes, there exists a lot of grey areas in the implementation of the Competency-based Curriculum (CBC). The transition to Junior School, learning progress for Grade Eight pupils and the system’s future ahead especially in the next two years, isn’t clear for all stakeholders.

For instance, young learners who graduated from Grade Six and sat the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) exam in October, are advancing to Grade Seven (the first class in junior school), before knowing how they fared in the exam that tested their performance in that level.

Unlike their Class Eight counterparts with whom they sat national exams together and who were placed for their Form One admission and will be reporting to their new schools next week, the junior learners are yet to receive their assessment results.

Logically, after sitting a formal test, whether it is a job interview or academic exam, the next thing the candidate expects is feedback on the assessment. The juniors are anxiously waiting for the now overdue results, whose delay erodes the essence and purpose of a terminal assessment.

While education sector experts largely agree there are a host of challenges facing the implementation of CBC—including inadequate teacher training and deployment, low funding, inconsistent pedagogical approaches and assessment techniques—the sector leadership must and should seek to ensure a seamless progression as well as seize available opportunities to inspire confidence among stakeholders.

They should not be seen to confirm claims CBC is a trial-and-error model, with inadequate tools to measure learners’ learning progress, needs and competencies.

The ministry needs to clear the air, ward off the many speculations doing the rounds, make public their strategies and assure parents their children are actually learning. Parents have a right to get the value of every coin and time they invest in the education of their children.

Again, do parents and the learners know what is next after Grade Nine (assuming it still will be the last junior school class)? Are secondary schools, which will soon be the senior schools, prepared to continue the CBC momentum? Secondary schools are still unsure whether they will host Grade Nine or their Form

One facilities will remain unoccupied once the current occupants transition to Form Two next year.
While recently the ministry sought to clarify that senior schools will be re-categorised and assigned different specialisation or learning pathways, such remains unsatisfactory.

In the ministry statement, it came out that senior school learners will take two core subjects (Community Service Learning and Physical Education) and pursue either of three learning pathways: Arts and Sports Science; Social Sciences; and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). It further stated that life skills will be adapted to suit the specific issues in each learning area.

Now, let us get practical. My upcountry sub-location is served by two primary and one secondary schools. The same, with slight variations, applies to the neighbouring and many other sub-locations across the country.

So, will each senior school teach all the three learning pathways or will they specialise? If they teach all, is the quality of learning guaranteed? If they specialise, is there an assurance of adequate facilities and absence of waste of others? What of the manpower needed?

This and other information is what teachers, parents and learners are yearning for. Kindly, someone clarify with a degree of satisfaction.

— shadrackmulei@gmail.com