Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has allayed fears over the scrapping of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) should President-elect William Ruto be sworn in as the fifth president.
Speaking to the media on Friday, August 26, Magoha explained that it would be practically impossible to do away with the new curriculum given the amount of money invested in the project.
Further, he added that many students had already adopted the new curriculum hence plans to abolish it may hit a snag.
"There is never a vacuum in government and with 10 million children under CBC, no government is even going to consider removing the curriculum. They will basically just try to improve it by trying to make it better in certain aspects," he stated.
Additionally, he noted that the transition of Grade Six students to junior secondary will be smooth following the completion of teachers' training.
Magoha also revealed that the Ministry was fast-tracking the completion of the CBC classes and that all the facilities would be complete by the beginning of the next academic year - January 2023.
"We have trained Grade 7 and 8 teachers. Grade 9 students will be trained in January 2023 by the incoming government," the CS expressed.
The scrapping of the CBC was one of the agendas that dominated President-elect William Ruto's campaigns.
During the signing of the Kenya Kwanza education charter, Ruto noted that the new curriculum would be reviewed should he take over power.
At the time, he opined that there were outstanding issues raised by various stakeholders that needed to be addressed.
"As Kenya Kwanza, we support the progression from what we had as knowledge and exam-based education, only, to the new format of knowledge, skills and competence as well as value-based education.
"This discussion is going to be largely about how we achieve universal access, how we make sure our education is relevant so that we can use it to tackle the challenges of our time, and how we make it more affordable for the majority," Ruto stated.
Government is yet to disclose the true cost of the CBC curriculum. However, in the 2022/23 financial year Treasury CS, Ukur Yatani, allocated Ksh1.2 billion for training teachers on CBC and Ksh 46 billion for the construction of CBC classrooms.
The funds were part of the Ksh544.4 billion allocated to the Education Ministry.
