The task force looking into the education system now wants the country to have a five-year transition period to phase out the 8-4-4 system.

During the five-year training period, the government shall have addressed the issues of teachers’ preparation, curriculum changes, parental responsibility and required infrastructure.

According to the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform, within that period, the country would have developed adequate infrastructure for the new education system.

In a preliminary report scheduled to be presented to President William Ruto any time soon, the task force also wants the current Grade 6 pupils scheduled to sit for their national Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) to be hosted in their present primary schools.

JSS will remain hosted in existing primary schools for a two-year period after which the task force would have made a permanent decision on where it would specifically be domiciled.

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And in a radical departure from the recommendations by Prof Fatuma Chege on the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC), the Prof Raphael Munavu led task force wants the structure changed from the original proposed 2-6-3-3-3 structure to 2-6-2-4-3 .

That means that if the task force report is adopted, pupils will go through 2 years in the Pre-primary /Early Child Development Education (ECDE); 6 years in primary; 2 years in JSS (or any other name); 4 years in senior secondary school; and 3 years in tertiary/university. The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) will also be required to immediately identify primary school teachers who will undergo a month training on how to manage Grade 7 pupils next year.

The preliminary report only addresses the anticipated transition to Grade 7 as the issues of Grade 8 curriculum; delivery and others would be dealt with in subsequent reports. The task force also wants the Ministry of Education to commission a team of qualified personnel for an end term evaluation of the 8-4-4 system and present their findings before it is phased out to pave way for full implementation of CBC.

“This will prevent CBC from facing similar challenges that 8-4-4 went through,” a member of the task force intimated.

Should the government adopt the recommendation to domicile JSS in the existing primary schools, it would have the problem of an imminent crisis that could result from the double intake of at least 2.5 million learners in Grade 6 and Standard Eight to Form One.

In January, pioneer learners under the new 2-6-3-3-3 CBC system will transition to junior secondary school after sitting the Grade Six national examinations.

It is also the year that present Class Eight learners under the 8-4-4 education system will join Form One after sitting KCPE examinations, thereby presenting a huge infrastructure challenge of hosting at least 2.5 million children.

The committee appointed by the President on September 30, that is supposed to be in operation for a six months, is also required to submit to him a progress report every two months from the date of their appointment.

The team, chaired by Prof Raphael Munavu, comprises other globally celebrated Kenyan teachers Peter Tabichi, Mutheu Kasanga, who were part of the CBC task force as well as Prof Collins Odete among others.

The team is expected to study all laws governing the basic education subsector and make recommendations for review of the legislations with a view to addressing “duplication, ambiguities, efficiency, constraints and improving linkages.”

The team is required to study, assess and make recommendations on “the conceptualization and implementation of key tenets guiding the competency-based approach including but not limited to value-based education, community service learning, parental empowerment and engagement.”

They are also to assess and come up with a framework for assessment and examination, quality assurance, teacher education and training as well as teacher deployment.

They are also to assess and come up with a framework for assessment and examination, quality assurance, teacher education and training as well as teacher deployment.

Parents should be ready to have their children at home as an education task force has proposed scrapping of boarding in secondary schools.

According to the task force, boarding facilities will be reserved for a few institutions that will admit learners across the country to pursue various pathways in senior secondary schools as envisioned under the new 2-6-3-3-3 education system.

And all children leaving Grade Six at the end of primary education will be required to enroll in the nearby secondary school for the three-year junior secondary education.

This is after the team roundly agreed that the junior secondary schools be domiciled at the high school level and not primary section as was proposed by some stakeholders.

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All parents will now be required to enroll their children in secondary schools within radius of about five kilometres.

This means parents must now prepare to have their children at home most of the time, under the day school programmes.

The task force feels that this will be one of the solutions to the perennial fires that gut down schools’ property and threaten children’s lives in boarding schools.

The recommendation was, however, based on the reasoning that most primary schools have a secondary wing and it would be easy to transition primary school children to the available spaces in adjacent facilities.

The team also proposes that children should not sit the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination at the end of the sixth year under the new curriculum.

The first national examination will be done at the end of junior secondary and will be used to place learners in various pathways at senior secondary schools.

Another national examination will be done at the end of senior secondary education (Grade 12) and will be used to place the learners to universities and colleges.

These proposals were made by the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) task force, which is chaired by Kenyatta university Vice chancellor,  Fatuma Chege to solve the transition headache of children from primary to secondary school under the new curriculum.

“These were the final proposals of the team. However, some details may slightly change as only a small team was tasked to polish the final report that was shared with the CS,” said a member of the task force.

Under the new the 2–6–3–3–3 education system, learners will spend two years in pre-primary education, six in primary, three in junior secondary, three in senior secondary school and another three in university.

Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha had previously hinted at the possibility of scrapping KCPE national examination.

Magoha had earlier said the Government would administer national examinations at the end of Grade Nine and Grade 12 of the CBC.

“As government, we have decided that there will be an examination after Year Nine and after Year 12. The discourse of Year Six will be for the task-force to advise us,” Magoha said in 2020.

KCPE will be replaced with continuous school assessments that will be done internally.

However, sources have it that some form of assessment would be implemented at the end of primary education (Grade Six) to gauge learners understanding of subject areas. school-based assessments would be carried out as was the case in the recent exercise when learners reported to schools after the prolonged closure of schools.

“The thinking is not to test children for transition purposes, but to monitor their learning progress by gauging their understanding of the subject areas for levelled interventions,” said a member of the task force.

The new curriculum requires that after junior secondary education, each student will choose what to pursue among three areas: arts and sports science; social sciences; or science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

It emerged the team proposed that some of the top schools be converted into special institutions offering the various pathways.

This means the institutions will have boarding component as the pathways may attract learners from across the country.

Another headache however arose on what practice would be adopted in cases where learners who live around the targeted top pathway schools would wish to be admitted for junior secondary education.