Heed head teachers’ call on choice of textbooks

Editorial 02nd Dec 2019 10:30:00 GMT +0300

The new Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) sought to address shortcomings in our educational system. But like all things new, it faced some challenges from the outset. This was made worse by lack of adequate consultations among all stakeholders as the Kenya national Union of Teachers (Knut) repeatedly complained.

The Ministry of Education appeared to patronise the whole exercise to the chagrin of teachers so much that on advice of Knut, some teachers boycotted training organised by the ministry on CBC in early this year

Thus, the implementation of CBC after several false starts was not an easy one. However, stakeholders agreed that CBC is a good concept, their point of departure being lack of consultation on various aspects of CBC.

This was amplified by some members of Kenya Primary Schools Head Teachers Association (KePSHA) yesterday when they arrived for the annual meeting in Mombasa yesterday.

The teachers expressed concerns that some of the CBC textbooks are substandard. Indeed, at the beginning of the year, several of the textbooks were flagged for glaring errors and had to be recalled. Additionally, lack of adequate funds, inadequate infrastructure and failure to meet the government set pupil-textbook ratio of 1:1 could hinder the seamless implementation of CBC.

KePSHA has demanded teachers’ involvement in the choice of textbooks to improve quality. It now behoves the Ministry of Education to heed this altruistic call from teachers for, ultimately, it is the teachers who have the difficult task of imparting knowledge long after the textbook authors and publishers have pocketed their money and left. CBC should be made to work as envisioned.

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