Education curriculum to be piloted in May forges disproportionate emphasis on competition

The education curriculum to be piloted in May has sparked concerns and conspicuously missing in its tenets is the competition factor. The curriculum adopts formative evaluation system and ditches the former summative method thus forging disproportionate emphasis on competition.

Formative evaluation is designed to help students identify their skills. It helps faculties identify and solve problematic areas to students. Otherwise, it scraps national exams and is insistent on Continuous Assessment Tests (CAT).

Transition and advancement to its levels are based on gauging students’ abilities and competence. Bearing that different teachers have dynamic and varied judging abilities, the country risks ending up with half-baked graduates.

Summative evaluation enhances competition as it involves comparison against some standards. It measures the mastery of learning standards by both students and teachers. Administering of national exams keeps teachers on toes for fear of attaining undesirable grades.

CATs are not often a good way of testing content mastery because once a test on a unit is done it is never reviewed at any other stage of learning. KCSE, for instance, covers all topics from Form One to Four making students revisit almost every unit taught.

End year exams and others in summative evaluation are superfluous when it comes to content mastery than CATs. Introduction of a new curriculum is a weighty matter and the ministry should not be in a rush to roll it out for political expediency.