Last week the great and the good of this great land converged on Nairobi to talk about how our children are educated. This conversation came nearly two decades late but we finally have a real chance to prepare our children for the future. We all now appreciate in this competitive, post-knowledge global economy that primacy will belong to societies with the best-educated population.
As far as we know today, innovation and creativity, critical thinking and analytical reasoning, communication and teamwork are the attributes that will underwrite individual flourishing and national prosperity. Moreover, the delivery mechanism of education, the curriculum, must be adaptive and nimble, not dogmatic and onerous. The spirit and intent of Kenya’s curriculum reform is both encouraging and laudable. When he spoke at Kibabii University last year, President Kenyatta pledged that the new curriculum would make education relevant to the lives of the learners.
When he officiated at the conference last week, Deputy President William Ruto said the new curriculum would be responsive to market needs. The head of the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, Dr Julius Jwan, reassured the public that the new curriculum would be focused on developing critical knowledge, skills and attitudes.
This would be a fundamental and welcome departure from the current emphasis on rote learning and regurgitation. I have argued in this column that in the 21st century, a high school education must be the birthright of every child born in this country, not a privilege of the well-to-do few. I am delighted that the proposed curriculum allows all
children to transition from primary to secondary school.
Moreover, assessments will be formative to evaluate learning achievement rather than national standardised tests, which privilege rote learning and incentivise cheating. I have a good feeling about the direction our curriculum is taking. I am especially delighted that the focus on learning is unequivocal. The curriculum intends that education is about knowledge learning and application of knowledge. The emphasis on numeracy, reading and writing in the early school years is especially laudable.
However, I am mindful that nearly all of the things that I find especially progressive in the proposed curriculum were said about the 8-4-4 system 31 years ago. Why has the 8-4-4 curriculum failed? I think it is not too late to answer this question. Let’s not be too quick to invest massive resources in curriculum change when the problem in our education lies elsewhere.
The real problem is that our children are not learning. This has everything to do with teachers and the quality of teaching, pedagogical approaches and much less with the elegance of the curriculum. The proof of a curriculum is in learning outcomes. A great curriculum does inevitably produce learning. Great teachers produce great learning outcomes. Perhaps this is where we ought to start. Let’s invest in recruiting, training and retaining the best teachers.