• President Ruto on Friday gazetted a 49-member task force to review the new system of education.
• It is one of the largest task forces ever formed in Kenya’s political and public governance history.
Image: FILE
Civil society has criticised the task force formed by President William Ruto to review CBC, saying it excludes key stakeholders.
The Kenya National Civil Societies Centre said in a statement on Sunday that failure to include players in the education sector, like tertiary colleges, Elimu Yetu Coalition, teachers and university staff unions, will deny recommendations to the task force wider ownership.
“The government’s efforts to reform education in the country seem to have started on a wrong footing by repeating the same mistakes made during the introduction of the new curriculum,” the statement signed by KNCSC executive director Suba Churchill said.
The centre said the new education system needs to earn public acceptance and support for its successful implementation.
Churchill said the task force may have been inadvertently turned into an avenue to reward individuals and segments of society that supported the ascent of the regime into power rather than address the fundamental issues and teething problems bedeviling the new education curriculum.
“Exclusion of key players in the education sector is so glaring and its shortcomings so obvious that they will not be addressed by merely allowing the substantive members of the task force to co-opt them,” he said.
“Co-opting their representatives, without the power and influence that comes with being gazetted as substantive members of the team will reduce them to mere guests of the task force with no capacity to lobby and advocate for the adoption of desirable recommendations moving forward.”
President Ruto on Friday gazetted a 49-member task force to review the new system of education.
With a membership of 42 and seven others as secretaries to the task-force, it is one of the largest task forces ever formed in Kenya’s political and public governance history.
Churchill said while the inclusion of university dons in the reform team is understandable, the exclusion of stakeholders involved directly at the primary levels of the CBC does not portend well for the assignment.
“Especially when the task force will form teams to critically look into issues relating to the burden of costs of learning materials that have come to be associated with the CBC.
Edited by A.N