State hints at schools to offer all career pathways
Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang has revealed that a majority of National and Extra-County institutions which will teach the three career pathways in Senior Schools.
The three pathways are Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Social Sciences and Humanities as well as Creative and Sports.
Kipsang said stakeholder engagement on the structure of Senior School, which comprises Grades 10, 11 and 12, has commenced and will also inform transition from Junior School.
Pioneer Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), now in Grade Eight, will transition to Grade 10 in 2026.
“Most our National and Extra-County schools, I can almost bet, will have three pathways because they are prepared towards that direction. There are some schools today that even have camps like athletics and football,” he said during a stakeholder engagement held in Nairobi.
But from the general situation, the PS said most secondary schools have developed capabilities in humanities and STEM and are ready to offer this pathway.
“What we will continue doing is to build the capacity of our schools to deal with those areas. In STEM, there are pure, applied science and technical studies. We will build capacities of our schools to be able to deal with those aspects. Generally, most of them will deal with pure sciences and will now continuously support them to build on applied sciences and technical studies,” Kipsang said.
General sports
For Creative and Sports, he said quite a number of schools are well established and will only guide them properly into knowing it is not the general sports but more of a Sport Science and building their capacity into sports as a learning area.
Senior School comprises three years of education targeted at learners in the age brackets of 15 to 17 years and lays the foundation for further education and training at the tertiary level and the world of work and also marks the end of Basic Education as defined in the Education Act, 2013.
Already, the PS has indicated that at Grade Nine, there will be both formative and summative assessment just like for Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) in Grade Six.
He affirmed that assessment at Grade 9 does not prevent learners from progression, saying only at Grade 12 it will be both for placement and certification.
Also, at Grade 12, learners will get a certificate, which will prepare them either to progress to the next level or move to start a certain aspect of life.
“At Grade 12, it will be both placement and certification while at Grade Nine it is purely transition from one level to the next because it is just preparing our children to know where they are going to - Sciences, Humanities or Creative,” he stated.
Kipsang assured that the Government is working to ensure a seamless transition of learners to higher education level or the world of work.
“We may not have had an opportunity to do what we are doing when we were transiting to junior school but I can assure you that we will be better prepared both in engaging with our teachers and learners to appreciate what they are expecting as they move forward,” said Kipsang.
The PS said CBC implementation is well on course and in the next few days, the Ministry will roll out 16,000 classrooms for Grade Nine.
