•The first junior secondary school class will be admitted in January.
•The current grade five pupils, who will next term (that starts on Monday) join grade six will sit their national primary CBC exam in November.
Image: JOHN CHESOLI
The Teachers Service Commission has said the Competency-Based Curriculum training for junior secondary school teachers will start next month.
TSC director for quality assurance and standards Reuben Nthamburi said the online training will start on May 9 to 13.
Six teachers from each secondary school will be trained.
Nthamburi said the training will be progressive until all the teachers are fully taken through.
“We are training six teachers at a time, to avoid paralysing learning,” he said.
Nthamburi spoke during the ongoing Kenya Secondary School Heads Association conference in Mombasa.
Secondary school teachers had proposed the training waits until January next year when the education calendar will have resumed normalcy.
Kessha chairperson Indimuli Kahi had said the training should be made flexible.
“We request TSC to rethink the number of teachers who they are planning to train,” he said.
“Some schools have many teachers and students, and training only six will disadvantage the learner and teacher, compared to a school with fewer tutors and students.”
Indimuli had said schools with a big student and teacher population have more teachers trained, for the exercise to be fair.
However, Nthamburi dismissed the proposal, saying they will only train six teachers from 10,000 public secondary schools, totalling 60,000 teachers, in the first phase of training.
The first junior secondary school class will be admitted in January.
The current Grade 5 pupils, who will next term (that starts on Monday) join Grade 6 will sit their national primary CBC exam in November.
Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development chief executive officer Charles Ochieng said the government needs to introduce the CBC learning module due to the changes across the world.
“You will be surprised to learn that what we have for the future has been achieved by some countries. Kenya is playing catch-up, we should embrace this programme,” he said.
Ochieng said secondary school education is the most critical phase of education in a learner's journey.
This is according to research done by the World Bank on Sub-Saharan Africa.
He said secondary school teachers had a critical role in ensuring CBC succeeds because secondary school students are the most receptive to adventures and innovations.
Ochieng said the world is becoming industrialised and learners should be prepared for the future.
“In the next 10 to 20 years, all the jobs will probably go online, some will be obsolete, and the rest purely fieldwork. At KICD, we are already conceptualising a virtual laboratory,” he said.
The KICD boss said learners should be taught about communication and collaboration skills, saying they are the sought after skills by employers currently and in the future.
He urged teachers and parents to be innovative, instead of complaining that the CBC is expensive.
TSC said teachers in practice should undergo the Teacher Professional Development course to sharpen their skills and bring them up to date with the current global issues and practices.
Cavin Anyuor, the commission's director for legal, labour and industrial relations said the TPD programme is a statutory requirement for teachers by law.
He said the commission has asked Parliament to oblige the government to pay the programme fee but the proposal has not yet seen the light of the day.
Until then, teachers are supposed to pay Sh6,000 for the course that has both in-class and online modules.
“Teaching is a noble profession. We, therefore, must be willing to protect it from quacks by taking the course,” Anyuor said.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris