Harmonise EAC education system

The protocol establishing the East African Community Common Market allows the free movement of goods, services and people in the five member States of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

Residents of the EAC bloc will come and go without meeting the traditional walls of discrimination and different treatment that attends to nationals of neighbouring, independent States.

Underpinning this growing integration is the exchange of not only goods, but cultural and technological capabilities. Citizens will move not only in search of markets for their goods and services but also in search of education.

Investment and employment largely depends on skills and knowledge. To deepen the integration process, EAC members ought to fast track the integration of educational systems to enable the region forge common standards in education and technology.

A precedence exists in the long defunct East African Community. It may be recalled that Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania had a common education system and curriculum. Students in Form Four used to sit for the East African Certificate of Education while Form Six candidates tackled the East African Advanced Certificate of Education.

The three countries evolved different examinations upon the collapse of the EAC in 1977 with Kenya having the Kenya Certificate of Education and the Kenya Advanced Certificate of Education.

Common system

Now that we have revived the community idea, we should look forward to the day when the five countries will forge a common educational higher education system and a common curriculum.

This is central to promoting citizens’ mobility and employability. Besides, a common education system will impart into the students common values, traditions and abilities that will deepen the idea of the community. This will subsequently pave way for the integration of our political systems.

The European Union has similarly evolved a common educational system for the 27 member countries under the auspices of the Bologna Declaration of 1999.

Under it, continental Europe has replaced traditional diplomas and masters degrees with an Anglo-American system of three-year undergraduate and one- or two-year post-graduate degrees from the start of the 2009-2010 academic year.

This is something the EAC member States should look at seriously because member countries don’t run a common educational system and/or curriculum.

A-levels

While Tanzania and Uganda have "A" levels, Kenya doesn’t. While students in Kenya go straight to university after Form Four, their Uganda and Tanzanian counterparts must go through a two-year advanced education in Form Five and Six, to qualify for university.

An advanced education and certificate of Form Six is not recognized by Kenyan universities. Nor can a Form Four education, however excellent the performance in KCSE, enable a Kenyan student be admitted to Makerere University or the University of Dar es Salam.

Member States must end these incongruities to ease not only movement of students, but increase their chances of getting jobs across the border.

{Kennedy Buhere, via e-mail}

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