President Uhuru Kenyatta has once again shown support for the five-year-old Competency-Based Curriculum.
He said learners going through CBC will not be deemed as failures but instead will be used as examples of success.
Kenyatta’s speech was read by Interior CS Fred Matiangi during the 21st conference of commonwealth education ministers held in Nairobi.
"Implementation of CBC teaches our children the skills of critical thinking and problem solving and inculcates critical social values," Kenyatta said.
He highlighted the importance of education ministries being prepared to handle pandemics and other situations.
For instance, during the pandemic, over 1.6bn learners in more than 190 countries were impacted by school closure.
Kenyatta said in commonwealth countries, around 500 million learners were affected by the closure which lasted for about 38 weeks to 60 weeks.
“As a result, education gains most of the commonwealth countries have made over the last 5 years are at serious risk of being rolled back,” he said.
The conference themed Rethinking education for innovation work and sustainability seeks to rethink how to treat post-pandemic effects.
It is in this breath that the President challenged education ministers to adopt changes that deal with the pandemic.
Kenyatta proposed four items that he said will lead the education sector into a post covid moment.
“First, we must complete the unfinished agenda of access, quality, and equity. Second, we urgently need to recover losses,” Kenyatta said.
The president called for quantification of the extent of learning losses and also the need to leverage innovations in a particular technology.
On his part, education CS George Magoha said the conference will allow education ministers an opportunity to rethink progress towards attaining development goals.
“We will explore strategies to finance education, identify priorities and formulate recommendations,” Magoha said.
He said the recommendations will then be presented during the upcoming commonwealth heads of government meeting.
The meeting will be held in Rwanda and is scheduled for June, this year.
The 20th conference was held in Fiji.
