PS: We will safeguard quality of education

Education PS Belio Kipsang during the release of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) 2018 in Nairobi, on Friday, December 21 2018. [David Njaaga, Standard]

The Ministry of Education is set to revamp the operations of the Quality Assurance and Standards to enforce compliance by schools.

This is provided in a draft, National Education Quality Assurance and Standards Framework for Basic Education Institutions (NEQASF), prepared through a consultative process.

The draft provides an approach for assessing, monitoring, evaluating and feedback mechanism intended to improve service delivery at school level and the quality of learning outcomes based on evidence and good practice.

The framework was presented during the National Validation Workshop at the Kenya Institute for Curriculum Development (KICD) at the weekend.

Dr Belio Kipsang, Principal Secretary for Early Learning and Basic Education, said the NEQASF had introduced for the first time, Institutional-Based Quality Assurance (IBQA), saying it will strengthen quality assurance at the school levels.

Kipsang said IBQA will require schools to use the school assessment tool to evaluate and judge the quality of their practice and its impact on learners’ outcomes.

The framework has grouped schools into zones where teachers from each zone will form a committee that will go round the schools to assess the quality assurance and standards of schools within the zone.

“The committee will then compile a report which will be shared to county and ministry education officials. Then, a team of external assessors will visit the zone and compile their report. We will then compare the two reports and use them to address emerging challenges,” Kipsang said.

The PS said the framework will eliminate absenteeism and lethargy among teachers.

Dr Mary Gaturu, acting director for Quality Assurance and Standards, said the ministry wants to re-engineer structures responsible for ensuring compliance with the requisite standards for efficient and effective service delivery at the school level.