Former Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary-General Wilson Sossion has said that the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) has never been implemented in schools countrywide.
Moreover, Sossion claims that CBC is not competency-based but the Outcome Based Education system that focuses on what a learner should be able to do in the real world after completing their studies.
On the other hand, CBC centers on the capability of learners to develop relevant skills needed for any engagement that they might seek to carry out.
“What we have in this country under implementation is not CBC as such and I would say that there has never been CBC in our classrooms and teachers are not teaching it, they are teaching the outcome-based curriculum,” noted Sossion.
“We are cheating ourselves as a country and that is why there are a lot of issues that are coming out, it is automatic.” He added while speaking during an interview at Citizen TV.
Furthermore, the former KNUT boss stated that President William Ruto’s announcement to set up a task force to resolve concerns pertaining to the curriculum portrays how Kenya’s education system is currently in shambles.
“For the president to give direction, it means there is a problem. You can see there is an outright public outcry and when a curriculum is not accepted by parents, children are not excited about it and teachers cannot implement it so it is the wrong system,” Sossion said.
Aside from alleging that the CBC system was politically imposed in Kenya, Sossion also opined that implementation of the education system was done hurriedly and without any public participation. As such, according to him, it was always destined to fail.
“We did things the wrong way. If we want to succeed let the professionals do their work and design a curriculum that works in a professional manner; this was not done right from the beginning,” he added.
“You cannot do a pilot between June 2017 and October the same year without even an evaluation report. We missed many things but now we have an opportunity to remedy this through this review that will be domiciled to correct all this.” Noted Sossion.
Also Read: CBC Classrooms to be Complete by Next Week – CS Magoha
Nonetheless, while pushing his point across, the former KNUT boss mentioned that when teachers raised their concerns in April 2019, regarding implementation of the CBC system, their opinions were ignored by the State even though they were the ones primed to teach the new curriculum.
“When Amina Mohamed, the then Education CS, received a summative evaluation report from experts which said that the country was not ready, and that the rollout be postponed it was ignored and she was removed from the Ministry within a few days. Cartels have since taken over this programme for purposes of business,” he said.
