Curriculum experts to monitor teachers

Kenya Institute of Curriculum CEO Development Dr Julius Jwan interacts with pupils during a past event. (Standard)

A team of 90 experts has been dispatched this morning to audit the teaching and understanding of the new curriculum in public schools across the country.

The Government officials, largely drawn from the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, (KICD) will conduct impromptu visits to schools in 18 counties as they seek to enforce implementation of the Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC).

A detailed document on the monitoring exercise seen by The Standard reveals that during the visits, the experts will sit in classrooms during lessons, hold feedback meetings with teachers and file daily reports on progress of the implementation of the CBC.

For the next 10 days, the experts – also known as curriculum developers – will demonstrate to the teachers how CBC lessons should be taught in the classroom. The exercise will end on May 3.

KICD Chief Executive Officer Jwan Julius said the process will provide the teachers with real, first-hand experiences on curriculum implementation.

Dr Jwan said the process will also identify opportunities to improve the curriculum designs and how to transfer lessons from field experiences to subsequent designs.

“What is envisioned in the curriculum designs and what is being taught in class should come out clearly. Where there are gaps in lesson delivery, the experts will take the teachers through the process,” said Jwan.

 

The Standard established that the curriculum developers had already completed three days orientation on a new monitoring methodology dubbed Do It Yourself.

The experts will now spend the next seven days in the field and later meet for debriefing where feedback will be shared to identify areas for correction and improvement.

The development comes as the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) threatened to rally teachers to revert to the old teaching methods under the 8-4-4 system.

Knut Secretary General Wilson Sossion described the curriculum implementation process as illegal.

“We shall not teach the CBC way as they are pushing us to do until they address all the gaps.”