The Competency-Based Education (CBE), introduced in Kenya in 2017, promised a transformative shift in the country’s education system – one that emphasises skills, critical thinking, and learner-centred approaches.

However, a newly released national education report has cast doubt on the progress of its implementation, revealing troubling gaps in foundational learning. 

According to a recent report, only four in 10 Grade Four learners are able to read and comprehend a Grade Three-level English story.

This finding raises critical concerns about the effectiveness of early literacy instruction under CBE, especially as learners prepare to progress into upper primary school. 

The literacy assessment, conducted among learners aged nine to 11 across 47 counties, examined reading comprehension, vocabulary understanding, and sentence construction.

A Grade Three English story, as used in the test, typically contains simple vocabulary, short paragraphs, and direct sentence structures requiring basic inference and sequencing skills. 

The report shows wide disparities. In rural public schools, fewer than 30 per cent of Grade Four learners demonstrated adequate reading comprehension, compared to over 60 per cent in private schools.  

Gender disparities were also evident, with girls outperforming boys by up to 10 percentage points. Arid and semi-arid counties showed the lowest performance, with some regions recording less than 20 per cent proficiency. 

The report attributes the worrying literacy outcomes partly to persistent challenges in the rollout of CBE. Many teachers remain inadequately trained in learner-centred pedagogy, while chronic shortages of learning materials continue to hinder effective classroom delivery.

Overcrowded classrooms and limited infrastructure out-blow the problem.  

Also, the transition from the foundational level (Grades One to Three) to the intermediate level (Grades Four to Six) appears to be poorly supported, with many learners struggling to adjust to the increased academic demands.

Teachers, especially in public schools, have voiced concerns over unrealistic curriculum expectations and the lack of tailored support for learners who fall behind.  

The literacy crisis mirrors similar shortcomings in numeracy. The same report reveals that fewer than 45 per cent of Grade Four learners could solve Grade Three-level arithmetic problems, such as basic addition, subtraction, and word problems. 

These results align with past findings from UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Reports, which have consistently pointed to stagnating learning outcomes among Kenyan primary schools, despite increasing enrolment rates. 

The Ministry of Education acknowledged the report’s findings and stated that efforts are underway to retrain 90,000 teachers in literacy instruction methods.

The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) also pledged to revise early-grade English content to make it more accessible. 

Education experts and civil society organisations urged the government to prioritise learning outcomes over structural reforms.

“This is a wake-up call. We must not confuse curriculum change with improved learning,” said an education policy analyst. 

The report recommends urgent investments in early-grade reading programmes, more targeted teacher support, and scaling up evidence-based interventions like reading clubs and remedial classes. 

The writer is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Eldoret, a higher education Expert, and a quality assurance Consultant