The Ministry of Education, through the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD), on Saturday, July 1, revealed the areas of specialisation for senior secondary school students.
KICD provided the roadmap as the country prepares to phase out the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) in November 2023.
The guidelines were communicated during the end of the 46th Annual Conference of the Kenya Secondary Heads Association (KESSHA) at Sheikh Zayed Hall in Mombasa.
Speaking to Kenyans.co.ke, Indimuli Kahi, Kenya Secondary School Head Teachers Association chairman, confirmed that the three specialisation areas, Arts and Sport Science, Social Sciences and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), would enrich the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC).
Indimuli noted that the Arts pathway will include performing and visual arts; in social sciences, languages, humanities and business will be given top priority.
“For STEM pathway, students will have an opportunity to pursue pure, applied, technical and engineering sciences as well as career and technology studies,” he told Kenyans.co.ke.
Indimuli explained that school heads had already started preparing earnestly to ensure schools are ready by 2026 to adapt to the new changes.
According to Indimuli, KICD wants each school to offer at least two pathways. Stakeholders had, however, recommended that all national schools offer all three pathways for students.
“60 per cent of learners in a school should be enrolled in STEM, 25 per cent in social sciences and the rest in arts,” Indimuli revealed.
KICD tasked secondary schools to prepare for the first batch of senior secondary school students enrolled in 2026. It also directed them to reorganise their departments and classes according to the pathways to be offered.
“There will also be an assessment of academic staff capacity which will also include capacity building of the staff based on the pathways picked,” Indimuli disclosed.
Lastly, schools were asked to analyse infrastructural and instrumental capacity depending on the pathway chosen.
Other resolutions made during KESSHA included; the government hiring additional 25,000 teachers and the distribution of capitation monies for the first, second, and third terms to be 50:30:20, respectively.
In the 2023/24 budget, the Ministry of Education was allocated Ksh628.6 billion, with part of the money set to fund the recruitment of teachers.
“In the next financial year, we will hire an additional teachers. It is crucial that we deploy these teachers in our schools in a manner that reflects equity,” Education CS Ezekiel Machogu stated in June 2023.
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