Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohammed on Saturday announced the national rollout of the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) was pushed January 2020.
The new curriculum was to be rolled out from nursery school to class three while piloting in class four was to start next year. This is after two years of piloting for the lower classes.
The piloting of the 2-6-6-3 education curriculum will continue the third year to fix the current implementation row.Ms Amina who on December 11 told a Senate Committee her ministry was not ready to roll-out, said the time will allow for the fixing of a few missing links.
She added that they have agreed with other education stakeholders to start training tutors in teaching colleges on the new curriculum in 2019.
MOE PRESS STATEMENT ON THE COMPETENCY-BASED CURRICULUM, 2019 pic.twitter.com/phSdWzJUiZ
— AMB. (Dr.) Amina C. Mohamed (@AMB_A_Mohammed) December 15, 2018
“The directorate of quality assurance and standards will be tasked to vigorously track the implementation of the competency-based curriculum in all sub-counties across the country and the training of quality assurance officers that will commence in February 2019,” she said.
Amina added that a secretariat will be established within the Education Ministry to coordinate the priorities, activities, communication and implementation infrastructure to support the CBC.
“The curriculum focus at the Ministry of Education will be re-organised to secure supervision and evaluation of the CBC in all public, private and special needs institutions across the country,” she said.
On Wednesday, publishers warned that they will lose billions of shillings, since they put money in the publishing of new learning materials.
Parents also raised concerns about the decision, saying that most of them had bought books.
They wondered what will happen to children who are supposed to revert to the old curriculum.
The CBC programme was replace the exam-focused and demanding 8-4-4 system of education that was criticized for not giving students skills necessary for the job market, overburdening children and focusing on the passing of exams.
The proposal to scrap the 8-4-4 system was first contained in a 2012 report by a task force chaired by Prof Douglas Odhiambo.
The team recommended the 2-6-3-3-3 system aimed at “ensuring learners acquire competencies and skills to meet the human resource aspirations of the Vision 2030 blueprint”.