Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu has defended the ministry’s decision to lower minimum entry grade to Teachers Training Colleges (TTCs).
In a statement on Thursday, October 12, Machogu said pegging entry level qualifications into TTCs to a Mean grade of C Plain in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) does not compromise the standards of the kind of teacher required to teach the primary education curriculum.
According to Machogu, the previous guidelines which required students to have scored Grade C in all subjects’ clusters apart from having mean grade of C in KCSE were restrictive and punitive.
“Removal of the cluster requirements does not mean we are lowering the standards of teacher education and training,” Machogu said.
Moreover, CS Machogu said the government will implement a recommendation by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) to the effect that recruitment into TTCs be pegged at C Plain without the cluster’s requirement.
Under the clustered requirements, applicants to TTCs needed to have a mean grade of C Plain and a score C Plain in Mathematics, English, Kiswahili, Humanities and Sciences.
The Cluster effect
The CS said removal of the clusters had led to enrolment of 12,000 prospective teachers into TTCs, and that the cluster requirements caused a sharp decline in enrolment.
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“The teachers were more than the students, something that threatened the closure of TTCs,” said CS Machogu.
Further, CS Machogu said some of the Primary school teachers in the 70s and 80s had not attained the equivalent of C Plain in the Secondary School certification yet were excellent teachers.
While giving examples, the CS said the Mandera TTC had attracted only 23 students under the Cluster requirements but had now enrolled 668 students following removal of the cluster reequipments.
“The 33 public Teacher Training Colleges had enrolled some 3,3,22 students under the cluster requirement but had since enrolled 18,670 students after the removal of the cluster requirements,” read part of the statement.
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Machogu on National Exams
Also, the CS said that the government has developed measures to prevent early exposure to the examinations in the forthcoming KCPE and KCSE examinations.
He stated that examinations will be picked from containers two times a day unlike in the past where they were picked once in the morning.
The CS explained that centre managers will pick the second paper to be done in the afternoon, to prevent possible early exposure of the second paper.
Machogu made the remarks when he officially opened Mandera Training College on Tuesday, October 10.
Present during the occasion were the Governor of Wajir County, Mohamed Khalif, Wajir Senator, Ali Roba, the Director General, Abdi Yusuf, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Council for Nomadic Education in Kenya, (NACONEK), Haroun Yusuf among other local leaders.
