Education CS Fred Matiang’i has continued with his bold education reforms with the latest move being the radical overhaul of the 8-4-4 curriculum that will be replaced with a new system on Thursday.
The new education system will have three levels including early years, middle school, and senior school education.
Technical experts from the Education ministry and the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development are working on the overdrive as they put final touches to the document that will be used to guide the curriculum.
On Monday, the national steering committee, which brings together representatives of all education stakeholders, will meet to approve the document before it is presented to the National Curriculum Conference ahead of its implementation.
Kenyans.co.ke has established that the new system will be modelled in such a way that it solves the challenges that have been associated with the 8-4-4 curriculum that has been criticised for being too focused on theoretical content in addition to being expensive for parents and students.
The new system will be borrowed from a 2012 task force that was chaired by Prof Douglas Odhiambo.
The task force proposed a 2-6-6-3 system where students will spend two years in pre-primary; three years in lower primary school education; three years of upper primary; and another three years of junior secondary education.
At junior secondary, students will be subjected to a broad-based curriculum to enable them explore their own abilities, personality and potential as a basis for choosing subjects according to career paths of interest which will then guide their choice of subjects in senior secondary school.
At senior secondary, the core subjects will be English, Kiswahili, Mathematics, integrated education, health education and pre-technical and pre-career education.
The students will also choose other subjects including social studies, religious education, business studies, agriculture, life skills & sports, and physical education.
The last three years will be spent at the university or at a tertiary institution based on the abilities of the student.
Education CS has already confirmed the curriculum will be presented on Thursday during a major education conference.
"We will present the proposed new curriculum to education stakeholders at a National Curriculum Conference to be held on December 8, 2016, after which we can plan how to implement it," Matiang'i stated.
