KNUT rubbishes new competency based curriculum

The Kenya National Union of Teachers has called for the suspension of the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) saying that teachers have ill-prepared and lack training.

Speaking during a press conference, KNUT Secretary General Wilson Sossion said the curriculum should be driven more by research studies and facts.

Sossion further stated that the reforms have not been debated in Parliament and cautioned against the exercise being politicized as this would destroy the education sector.

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“The implementation of the Competency Based Curriculum was hurriedly done before the majority of the teachers were trained on its contents and teaching methods,” said Sossion.

He now wants the Ministry of Education and the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development to suspend the implementation of the system and instead shift back to the 8-4-4 system.

“Parents and other education stakeholders’ involvement and public participation in the curriculum reform process was below expectation and after the rollout of the CBC there was no public awareness campaigns on the same by KICD, TSC and MoE. This curriculum should be suspended,” Sossion said.

KNUT further explained that it is not opposed to the new curriculum and proposed that it should be implemented in 2020 when proper preparation of all the stakeholders and more so the teachers is done.

“Kenya is not a failing State to implement a curriculum that is developed by foreign NGOs, but this calls for proper infrastructure, training of the facilitators’ and public participation and involvement of the parents which is critical.”

According to KNUT, their stand on the CBC is based on research which its officials did on teachers’ preparedness in the implementation in pre-primary and lower primary schools.

The research which took slightly over two months to complete involved 1,455 teachers who were interviewed. They included 304 head teachers from 405 schools in 37 counties and 48 KNUT executive secretaries.

The Competency Based Curriculum for early years education was rolled out in pre-primary 1 and 2, and grades 1,2 and 3 across the country on January 3, 2019.

Prior to implementation, the curriculum designs for early years education had been distributed to the schools.

Some 186,000 teachers who are now teaching the early years pupils were trained in four sessions; December 2017, April 2018, August 2018 and December 2018. 

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