TVETS to share training equipment with teachers colleges— PS Muoria

Technical Vocational and Education Training (TVETs) institutions will share training equipment with Teacher Training Institutions located in the same geographical area.

This is according to the Principal Secretary for TVETs Esther Muoria. She said the Ministry of Education through her department will soon map out all the TVETs and teacher training institutions located in the same area to implement the directive.

The move, she said, will help teachers to get the technical skills and know how to implement the Competency-Based Curriculum because TVETs already have the learning equipment.

Muoria was speaking in Mombasa on Monday after officially opening a four-day annual conference for members of the Kenya Teachers’ Colleges Principals Association.

“We are going to partner with teacher training colleges as TVETs so that we can be able to use the equipment we have in our institutions together,” she said.

“We will help our teachers to get the technical skills and know how to implement the CBC curriculum because we have the equipment in our TVET institutions.”

So far, 154 TVET institutions in the country have been equipped with the latest machines to boost the skills of learners.

The institutions are now expected to produce graduates with hands-on experience and the requisite set of technical skills to meet labour and industrial demands.

PS Muoria said the Education ministry was in the process of reducing the number of business courses offered by TVET institutions. This is in bid  to encourage more Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (Stem) courses, so as to have more graduates skilled according to labour market demands.

“We want to move away from theory teaching to practical teaching in our TVET institutions. Our very able Education CS Ezekiel Machogu said we should reduce business courses and encourage more Stem courses in TVET institutions and technical training colleges,” she said.

“The skills will be taught mostly in the stem courses because we want to industrialise this country and we can only achieve this if we have technical courses being upraised.”

In a speech read on his behalf by the PS, Machogu said the CBC is a value-based curriculum that aims at empowering learners and youth with the requisite 21st century skills for their own development, and that of the nation.

He said with the implementation of CBC, the potential of each learner is identified at an early age. He said teachers play a central role in these processes by guiding the learner in the identification of different pathways based on their talents and potential.

This, he said, must be the teacher trainers driving force and desire to achieve in every trainee that passes through their hands as teacher educators.

“This conference has come at an opportune time when you, as teacher educators, must chart the way forward in ensuring the teachers you produce from your colleges are of high quality. They should also be able to effectively implement the CBC in the schools,” Machogu said.

“Your primary responsibility entails not only the development of quality teachers for our schools but also teachers with the ability to nurture the tender minds of our children from early years until they become skilled and responsible citizens of this great nation.”

Machogu said the government will work closely with private TTCs by establishing communities of practice to complement each other’s efforts, and learn from each other in order to provide quality and effective teachers for both public and private schools where Kenyan children attend.

He commended the TTCs for commencing the implementation of Competency-Based Teacher Education with the first cohort of pre-service and upgrade in 2021.

The first cohort of the upgrade trainees he said graduated in December 2022, and a number of them have already been employed by the Teacher Service Commission.

The pre-service, he said, have completed two years and in September 2023, they will begin the third and final year.

“I have no doubt that teachers leaving your colleges at the end of the course will have been thoroughly prepared to implement the education reforms,” he said.

KTCPA chairman Saul Barasa said the conference was very crucial as members will discuss issues surrounding education reform as they affect teachers.

The conference is themed; ‘Empowering the Teacher Educator in The Era of Education Reform’.

“I can confirm to you that all teacher training colleges have embraced a new curriculum called the Competency-Based Teacher Education Programme,” Barasa said.

Barasa is also the Chief Principal Kibabii Diploma Teachers Training Institute.