- Ong'ondo said accommodating Health education in Science does not mean it was a mistake to come up with it as a learning area.
- He said when KICD was coming up with the learning areas, the institute was putting into consideration several factors.
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Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development CEO Charles Ong’ondo has acknowledged that people have raised concerns over the idea to scrape off some subjects and learning areas in the Competence-Based Curriculum.
Ong'ondo said some people had fears that if some learning areas are scrapped off, then learners will have fewer options to choose from when picking subjects for their career paths.
Speaking during an interview with Citizen TV on Wednesday night, Ong'ondo said the institute is not scrapping off learning areas but rather, rationalising them.
"Just to assure the country, what we are doing is not scrapping nor is it killing learning areas as some people have said. We are rationalising," he said.
The KICD boss said one of the ways the institute is rationalising the curriculum is by looking at some learning areas which have related strands and sub-strands and accommodating them in one learning area.
"You look at a learning area in Junior School like health education and then you say there is a lot of overlap between some of the issues that we are dealing with in Health education that could be accommodated within the broader area of science," he said.
Ong'ondo said accommodating Health education in Science does not mean it was a mistake to come up with it as a learning area.
He said when KICD was coming up with the learning areas, the institute was putting into consideration several factors.
"When we were coming up with a learning area we were thinking about identity, prominence and consistency with what the rest of the world is doing," he said.
For a learning area like life skills, Ong'ondo said it can be accommodated in social studies.
He said the move to accommodate some learning areas in others is better than scrapping them off in totality.
"This makes sure that the critical competencies that learners are supposed to have are not lost. It also makes sure that we are still giving the learners adequate exposure to be able to choose the specific career pathways they want," Ong'ondo said.
Additionally, Ong'ondo said learning areas mutate. He said science in primary school mutates into biology, physics and chemistry in high school.
He said the institute ensures aspects of biology, physics and chemistry are embedded in science in junior school so that learners are not surprised when they meet the subjects in high school.
"Thus, we have taken care to ensure that the competency, the values and even the learner-centred pedagogies that CBC anticipates are maintained," he said.
This comes as the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms recommended that the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development reduces the number of subjects from nine to seven for Grades one to three.
For Grades 6 to 4, the party proposed their subjects come down from 12 to eight. While grades seven to nine will have their subjects reduced from 14 to nine if the reforms are implemented.
The working party had noted complaints from stakeholders about the high cost of the curriculum and the high number of learning areas.