100,000 teachers to undergo training on new curriculum

Education PS Belio Kipsang, TSC chief executive Nancy Macharia, former Education CS Amina Mohamed and Education CS George Magoha. [File,Standard]

In a bid to achieve complete rollout of the competence-based curriculum (CBC), more than 100,000 teachers are set to benefit from a capacity-building training from this month.

The programme, which will be cascaded down the teaching fraternity, will begin with the training of 172 officers from different organisations, including Ministry of Education, Teachers Service Commission (TSC) staff, Kenya Institute of Special Education (KISE), Kenya Institute of CurriculumDevelopment (KISE) and Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC).

Master trainers

This training of master trainers will run between April 8 and 12.

The second level of training in 43 regions will target 3,000 trainers of trainers who will be trained by the master trainers. This category will include 515 quality assurance and standards officers (QASOs); 1,165 curriculum support officers (CSOs); and 1,320 CBC champion teachers.

Training for this category of teachers will be carried out between April 22 and 26.  

Between April 22 and 26, the trainers of trainers will train a total of 68,490 teachers in lower primary plus another 22,830 head teachers. Master trainers will offer support during this training.

“Let me assure the public that teachers are prepared to implement the CBC. Already, we have trained 170,000 teachers to handle up to Grade 3,” TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia said.

Dr Macharia says an additional 110,000 teachers will be trained to handle Grades Four to Six.

Ministry of Education officials will undergo a further training funded by the World Bank from April 28 to May 17. To be included in this training will be officials from the Ministry, TSC, KICD, KNEC, Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA) and Kenya Education Management Institute (KEMI).

From the training, the trainers will train another 1,200 education officers from the Ministry of Education headquarters, county and sub-county offices.

“TSC will be heading the capacity building programme in collaboration with KICD to train teachers interpret the curriculum design and also in collaboration with KNEC on assessment,” Macharia said.

She further pointed out that capacity building is a continuous process which continues as long as a teacher is still in service.

Kenya rolled CBC this year as a means of addressing challenges of a fact evolving world that could not be solved by the 8-4-4 system which has been in use since its introduction in 1985 by former President Daniel arap Moi.

Calls for suspension

The new system will include two years of pre-primary, three years of lower primary, three years of upper primary, three years of lower secondary, three years of senior school and at least three years of higher education.

Last month, the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) called for suspension on rollout of the new curriculum after it released a report stating that teachers are not well prepared to handle it.  

The report came after the union carried out a study involving 1,455 teachers and 304 school heads spread across 37 counties.

Training of teachers has been ongoing. In January, the Oxford University Press (OUP) offred to train 7,500 teachers in lower primary on the new curriculum.

The trainings were carried out in a series of 50 workshops co-sponsored by partners including Alternative Provision of Basic Education and Training (ApBET), Kenya Private Schools Association (KPSA) and the ministry.  

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