The Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers yesterday backed off from sabotaging the training of teachers under the new competency-based curriculum.
This leaves the Kenya National Union of Teachers as the lone wolf in the campaign.
Kuppet chairman Omboko Milemba rubbished calls to boycott the training, and described those opposed to the training as "people with criminal minds."
"If you are a strong leader then you have to appreciate what other leaders are doing... When CS Magoha said we are now training then we knew that we are overcoming the obstacle that we had," Milemba said in Nairobi.
Knut says its opposition to the new curriculum is based on alleged no consultations before the rollout, lack of a legal sessional paper to guide the rollout, poor training of teachers and substandard infrastructure to support the rollout.
The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development and Teachers Service Commission yesterday dismissed Knut's claims as insincere.
TSC reported 99 per cent success of the training by the close of the first day.
KICD director Julius Jwan told the Star that the union had taken part in all meetings prior to the rollout in January.
Jwan said the teacher framework on the new curriculum is in place. "You don't train someone to teach on a particular curriculum, you train them on a different way of delivering information and this is what the training entails to help classes to be more interactive and engage learners more."
Milemba accused Knut of lacking a clear proposal on curriculum reforms."For us we have been with Knut in supporting the training of teachers before the new curriculum is introduced... but if they (Knut) have some reservations on the training then they should give us a method of operation to move forward."
The government rolled out the CBC in Pre-school and lower primary one, two, and three at the beginning of the first term in January.
This year's training is the fourth and involves 91,000 teachers from public and private schools.
An adamant Knut secretary general Wilson Sossion insists that the government should shelve the new curriculum and go back to the drawing board over curriculum reforms.
"Let's bring the curriculum debate to a national education conference that will inform the necessary curriculum changes. The implementation alone is an illegality. Teacher training is guided by no framework... We cannot accept a thing that is ambiguous," Sossion told the Star yesterday.
Most of the teachers taking part in the training have ignored calls by the giant union to boycott the exercise.
In this year's training, the government is using a 96-page document tagged The Facilitators Training Manual on Competency-Based Curriculum.
The document is a part of the training manual developed by the TSC and KICD.
