• They say CBC classrooms have been taken over by Form 1 students in the 100 per cent transition programme.
• Were said secondary schools lack preparedness and the capacity to receive Grade 6 learners in junior secondary because of inadequate infrastructure.
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The Kenya National Union of Teachers Homa Bay branch has called for the suspension of CBC to allow for public participation in its implementation.
“The CBC curriculum should not be scrapped but should be suspended to enable the process that has begun of public participation to continue to its conclusive level to see whether the curriculum should continue or be scrapped all together,” Patrick Were said.
Were, a representative from Knut, said the 8-4-4 system should be modified to suit the needs and emerging trends in the education sector.
“The outcome-based curriculum needs to be strengthened and modified to meet the needs and emerging trends in education going by the changes that are dynamic and taking place in Kenya today,” he said.
Were said secondary schools lack preparedness and the capacity to receive Grade 6 learners in junior secondary because of inadequate infrastructure.
“The CBC classrooms that were built for them have been taken over by Form 1 students in the 100 per cent transition programme. This means they have no extra classrooms to house the incoming children,” Were said.
He spoke during a stakeholder engagement forum on CBC implementation at Homa Bay Boys High School Thursday.
The event was presided over by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms to collect proposals from members of the public regarding the curriculum.
During the meeting, various issues were raised among them, infrastructural capacity of secondary schools in accommodating junior secondary, preparedness of teachers to handle incoming junior secondary students, training of CBC teachers, transition to junior secondary, among others.
“The teachers at secondary level have not been adequately trained to unlearn the 8-4-4 system and learn and re-learn the CBC curriculum. This means the secondary schools have no preparedness to receive Grade 6 and hence the need to domicile grade 7, 8 and 9 in primary schools where the teachers have trained though not adequately,” Were said.
Forum chairperson Prof Collins Odote, who is also a member of the task force and the team leader for the Nyanza component of the consultations, said the party was working on education reforms.
He said there are several issues that have been raised by the public and the most mentioned is that of transition.
“There are several things people have raised, especially on the transition that kids should be domiciled in primary schools, issues of costs of O-levels from ECD to university were raised, teachers welfare and preparedness,” Prof Odote said.
Speaking at the event, CBC pupils said the curriculum has a number of challenges, including the grading system that is causing confusion for both parents and themselves.
They said some of their parents do understand the meaning and context of ME (Meets Expectation), EE (Exceeds Expectation), among other key words.
The forum urged the government to invest in infrastructure as well as employing more teachers for the success of the curriculum.