Plans for High school teachers to begin a 10-month training on Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) are complete and the tutors are likely to pursue the training from February 2023.

Those targeted for the upgrading programme are at least 110,000 secondary school teachers who will handle junior secondary schools.

The tutors are set to be retooled on the mechanisms of handling Grade 7,8 and 9 which will be junior secondary classes under CBC.

From the figures, all secondary school teachers, starting with those charged with teaching subjects under the new curriculum in junior secondary section, will have to be retooled.

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Early this year, Education Cabinet Secretary prof George Magoha, maintained that the 10-month training for teachers will help in handling the upcoming Grade 7 learners.

While giving a speech at Kapsabet Girls High School in Nandi County, the CS confirmed that the training will be conducted between February and December 2023.

In January 2023, Grade 6 learners will transition to Junior secondary schools, which will comprise of Grades 7, 8 and 9.

According to the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), the 110,000 secondary school teachers will be retooled to enable them respond to the demands of Competency Based Curriculum (CBC).

Further TSC maintains that new learning areas introduced under the system have made it mandatory for all teachers to go back to school to gain skills on how to handle the subject adjustments as the secondary schools prepare for a double intake in 2023.

In a letter to Basic Education Principal Secretary Dr Julius Jwan, TSC Chief Executive Nancy Macharia said that there are some new subjects which require teachers to be trained and hired.

Those requiring special attention include pre-technical and pre-vocational education, life skills, agriculture and health education.

Others are optional subjects such as indigenous languages, Kenya sign language, visual arts and performing arts.

Macharia said that all home science and biology teachers will have to be retrained to enable them handle health education. Additionally, those in social studies must be taught how to teach new content on citizenship while those for sports and physical education must be enabled to deal with sports and health.

The commission recommends an overhaul of the teacher education curriculum to meet the special demands of CBC.

“We advise and recommend that the teacher education curriculum should be made flexible and aligned to enable a single teacher to teach a variety of subjects,” said Macharia in her letter to Jwan, which is an official advisory on the teacher preparation and requirements as the country gears up for the establishment of junior and senior secondary schools in under two years.

In April, the retooling will be in form of five-day face to face training while subsequent continuous learning on the new subject areas will shift online.

Already upgrading programme for primary school teachers kicked off and the candidates will sit for their final assessment and practicum this July.

Sources closer to the teachers’ service commission, TSC and the ministry have hinted on the dates that the teacher trainers who took part in the Competency based curriculum, CBC, which ended on Friday May 13 will be paid their transport reimbursements.

The disappointed teachers left various marking centres without clear information on when their fare would be reimbursed. They however got informed that they will be paid ksh. 400 per day for the four days. The trainers of trainers of trainers are however expecting a total of ksh. 3,500 per day for four days. Out of the amount, ksh. 1000 will cover bundles, another ksh. 1000 will meet the transport cost while ksh. 1,500 will go towards facilitation fees.

What was even more disturbing to the trainers was that even the trainers of trainers, who attended their training a week earlier than the trainers, had not been paid anything.

The teachers that we interviewed some minutes after the event questioned why the TSC and the ministry had to rush the idea of CBC training if they new they had no ready funds to pay the trainees.

“Is ksh. 400 worth being paid after three months? The money they are paying us is too little compared to the time and fare we spent during the training yet it can’t even be paid promptly. How will they expect us to implement the CBC promptly if they are not prompt themselves?”  asked an irritated teacher.

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The TSC and ministry of education sources we talked to however said that they are still capturing details of the trainers and trainers of trainers in their database. They are yet to receive all the names of the trainers and the trainer of trainers and the phone numbers from various sub counties before effecting the pay.

“We must receive the details of all the trainers and the trainers of trainers from the TSC sub county offices before paying the participants. We want to pay them all at ago through bulk SMS and that cannot happen if the lists are typed incompletely or if we lack some names. What I can assure the teachers is that they will receive their dues by the end of the month,” said a TSC officer who sought anonymity.

CBC trainers attending the CBC training at selected training centres in Kisii County have complained about unfair distributions of the training centres.

They said that most of them were invited to report to other sub-counties instead of their own home sub counties.

According to them, this posed an economic problem as they incurred costs in transport and other expenses.

“We ask the ministry to allow teachers to attend at the centres of their own choice depending on their transportation convenience,” stated one teacher who preferred anonymity.

Although the CBC trainers will be given a transport reimbursement after the training, the teachers claim that the ksh. 400 per day that TSC and ministry of education are planning to pay as transport reimbursement is far much below the expenses they incur in the roads.

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CBC Teacher trainers from Kenyenya Sub- County were the most affected as majority of them were instructed to report at Nyangweta Secondary School in the neighboring Etago Sub- County.

Those from Magena Secondary School were told to report to Sameta Sub- County, which is 40 kilometers away from the nearest training Centre at Kenyenya TTC; a stone throw distance from their school.

A huge chunk of teachers reported to St.Angela Girls High School, Nyabisasse and Kisii School for training.

Speaking about the training, Kisii County Director of Education Pius Ngoma called it a timely event as the Competency Based Curriculum needed support from all stakeholders.

The education director appealed to various principals to release their selected members of staff to attend the vital training.

Ngoma said the first phase of the training features languages, applied sciences and sports teachers, to be followed by teachers of various other subjects later.

Education Cabinet Secretary Prof. George Magoha has maintained that teachers are they are adequately trained to handle it. Magoha has defended the role of teachers in the implementation of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), saying that teachers are competent in that area.

The CS said that he has conducted assessments in about 500 schools across the country, and is yet to find an incompetent teacher, amid reports of such.

“I don’t believe reports, even from my quality assurance officers. I sample, and I have never found a CBC classroom not being attended to by a competent teacher,” said Magoha.

The CS reiterated that the National Government will oversee the success of the new curriculum, which was unveiled in 2017 to replace the 8-4-4 system.

“This CBC is here to stay. It is the most transformative thing I have seen… I used to worry that teachers would compromise it, but they too are happy about it,” Magoha said.

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He, however, acknowledged that there are teething challenges in the CBC, one being digital literacy.

Despite records of the new curriculum being available on the Digital Learning Programme, ease of access has been a problem.

Magoha has said that schools need to make more use of the devices provided by the government, such as projectors, instead of having learners print out every material.

“We know for sure as a government that nothing is perfect. We also know that CBC isn’t perfect, but we also know for sure that the train left the station in 2018, even before I was appointed as Education CS,” he stated.

On Tuesday, it emerged that at least 228,000 primary school teachers have been trained on the CBC, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) said.

Teachers who will handle Grade Six pupils will be trained by December 2021.

Some 60,000 high school teachers will also be trained on CBC in March next year in preparation for the junior secondary rollout.

The national rollout of Competency-Based Curriculum started in January 2019 at Pre-Primary I and II and Grades One, Two and Three in lower primary.

The 2-6-3-3-3 curriculum was billed as the ultimate game-changer in the country’s education as it seeks to plug gaps noted under the 8-4-4 system of rote learning and cut-throat examinations.

A survey has revealed that for every 10 teachers, 8 are yet to acquire the requisite qualifications for teaching the competency-based curriculum (CBC). This new revelation comes at the sunset of 8-4-4, With only a year to the complete phase out of 8-4-4 system in primary schools.

The Economic Survey 2021 released last week shows that 81.6 per cent, require a diploma to effectively implement the new curriculum.

Although the Education ministry has been offering short courses for selected teachers to help jumpstart CBC, now in Grade 5, the short courses do not replace the diploma requirement and therefore the teachers still need to go back to school.

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They will need to upgrade their qualifications through a one-year in-service programme at Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs)

“The school-based upgrading programme to benefit teachers in service will be available once the school calendar normalises (from 2023),” Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Jwan said while announcing the programme in July.

The economic survey revelations come amid national outrage on implementation for CBC, with parents raising concerns over mountains of homework for their children.

While many have questioned the rationale of the heavy workload and endless lists of learning materials, some have gone to the extent of questioning the competence of teachers implementing CBC.

“I have heard your cries of parents, guardians and teachers. The petition challenging CBC will be filed in Court next week. The education system in Kenya should not be an expensive, inefficient and ineffective experiment with our children and their future as is our leadership,” Law Society of Kenya president Nelson Havi tweeted on September 8.

MPs have also masked the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) to issue clear guidelines to teachers and parents on how pupil assignments should be handled.

At present, only teachers from pre-primary 1 up to Grade 5 are teaching the CBC but it will be taught by all teachers once the last 8-4-4 class exits in 2023.

By the end of 2020 when the P1 training was phased out, the country had 21,632 diploma holders only teaching in its 23,246 primary schools and 17,930 others with a bachelor’s degree. Some 491 others had post-graduate qualifications.

The race to retrain teachers comes at a time when efforts to raise the entry qualification grades for teacher trainees has resulted in low enrolment in teacher training colleges (TTCs).

The entry requirement for the diploma of primary education and the ECDE programmes is Grade C (plain) in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination or its equivalent as certified by the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec).

Candidates for the two diploma courses are also required to have a C plain in all the cluster subjects – English and Kiswahili, mathematics, any humanities and any science subject.

For candidates with disabilities, the minimum entry grade is C (minus), with a C (minus) in the cluster subjects.

After the ministry and TSC revised the entry grades, more than 30 government-owned TTCs and 37 private ones have been left without students as only a few qualified.

Only five public TTCs enrolled an average of 20 students, down from the more than 200 they used to recruit each year.

The five colleges that got students are Thogoto TTC, Machakos TTC, Igoji TTC, Baringo TTC and Migori TTC.

TSC and MoE have also started an upgrading programme for P1 holders who are unemployed to attain diploma qualification. The training will take place at the TTCs.

There is an expected demand for secondary school teachers once CBC rolls out in secondary schools in January 2023.

TSC recently sent an advisory to the university on teacher training in new learning areas that current teachers are not skilled in.

Last month, the commission also reported that some subject combinations failed to attract any applicants during a recruitment exercise it carried out in July.