Sampled Public Participation Views on CBC From Various Counties
Education stakeholders have expressed their views over issues that they want retained or rejected during the implementation of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), after an extensive public participation that lasted 10 days.
Among the issues which dominated the debates are; Lack of proper teacher training, inadequate classrooms, the sidelining of parents and clash of culture. were some of the issues that dominated debates during the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform taskforce tour of counties.
Most of those who presented their views urged the government to recruit more teachers to cope with the workload and the high number of learners.
Stakeholders from counties were particularly concerned with the clash of culture and age gap between learners in junior and senior secondary schools. Below are some of the views that were sampled from each county.
Meru County
· Government should look solve CBC effects on culture before implementation
Kirinyaga County
· Government should introduce sign language in the new curriculum from the early stages.
· school feeding programmes should be revived to retain learners in schools.
Nyandarua County
· Grade Six learners need more time to mature physically due to their tender age
· young children still need close parental care, away from their seniors who might bully and introduce drugs to them.
· A Grade Six pupil said he was afraid of joining secondary school for Grade Seven because he was too young to face the secondary school teenagers, hence prefers to remain in primary till maturity.
· some of the learners are still bedwetting and need to stay in the day school set-up.
Nakuru County
· CBC falls short of its expectation and needs improving for it to be successful.
· the curriculum will be affordable if the government equip schools with infrastructure.
· setting up classes to accommodate students and avoid overcrowding in schools, must be the government’s first agenda.
· schools need resources including furniture, equipment, technology, curriculum materials and textbooks.
· teachers are not well-trained or equipped to handle students and pupils under the new curriculum.
· Teachers are ill-equipped to handle students and they should be trained. The government must provide and incorporate affordable, reasonable and accessible teaching methods
· primary school teachers should be allowed to handle Junior High School students and for the classrooms to be set up in primary schools.
· Primary School teachers are more qualified to handle pupils aged between 11 and 13 years, compared to Secondary School teachers, who are used to handling teenagers.
· the curriculum is expensive and will be inconvenient to students who come from a humble background.
Kisumu County
· high cost of learning will be a major challenge in achieving the objectives of the new curriculum.
· schools lacked the appropriate infrastructure to continue implementing the programme and those in special schools had been ignored in totality.
Kisii County
· stakeholders should be given adequate time to agree on salient issues raised.
· The Ministry of Education should be detached from boarding issues.
· Grade Six pupils from Nyamage Primary school in Kisii Central said the cost of buying raw materials to enable them to undertake their assignments was high and that some of their parents could not afford it.
· the syllabus is resource-intensive.
Homabay county
· teachers were harassed to deter them from telling the government the truth about when and how to implement the CBC. failure to accept the truth has led to problems bedevilling implementation of the curriculum.
· CBC should be suspended as soon as possible until the President makes a determination on whether to scrap it or continue with it.
· teachers have not been trained adequately for the implementation of the curriculum. Those implementing the curriculum in the primary schools are doing so because the employer directed them to do so but they were not adequately trained for it.
· government should sponsor the learning materials.
Migori County
· Teachers have never been trained on CBC.
Mandera County
· The government should train more teachers from the area.
· poor internet connectivity as a hindrance.
West Pokot County
· There should be a quality but affordable education system to suit the needs and emerging trends in the education sector.
Bomet County
· CBC was rushed with total disregard for pertinent issues raised by stakeholders. The teachers do not know what they are teaching
Makueni County
· parents and learners are yet to understand its purpose and it should be restructured.
· formative assessment has increased examination workload.
· Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) should establish clear guidelines on the assessment of learners.
· a standardised assessment should be formulated to ensure that learners countrywide are assessed uniformly.
· Examinations should be structured as bringing back multiple choices is going back to the 8-4-4 system
Nairobi county
· government should fund higher learning institutions fully and increase research funds in order to meet its mandate.
· government should cushion higher learning institutions from the current cash crunch.
· the government should identify courses which have a deficit like medicine or engineering and offer learners grants
· the government should not merge Higher Education Loans Board (Helb) and Universities Fund saying the move will not be a remedy to the financial crises facing universities.
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