George Magoha, the cabinet secretary for education, announced on Monday, June 20, that the first cohort of students enrolled in the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) will continue attending primary schools even after passing the 2022 national exam intended to transfer them to junior secondary.
Magoha allayed concerns expressed by parents on the readiness of private schools to welcome the first group of Grade Six graduates as boarders in junior secondary schools in a statement to the media at the Moi Educational Centre.
The competition should be saved for when the students are looking to enroll in senior secondary schools in Grade 10, he said, adding that there was no need for the parents to transfer the pupils to different institutions.
“It would be very important for the parents who already have their children in private schools to retain them in junior secondary facilities that are established within those schools so that the cut-throat competition that comes after standard eight be postponed to Year 10,” he stated.
“It is just one additional year so that they will even be a little bit older than usual when they start competing now for the senior school,” Magoha added.
Additionally, Magoha rejected the claims that the CBC implied that children entered high schools at a young age and that the teachers lacked the necessary skills to deal with the students. In the 8-4-4 system, he mentioned that some secondary schools had admitted children as early as 12 years old.
“Who said that our teachers are not well-trained, even in this school, we have had 12-year-olds before and even now. I am a doctor and I can tell you that the difference between a 12 and 14-year-old is not that serious, they even behave better,” he declared.
The Education CS said that 1,296 of the 5,000 CBC classrooms being built in public schools have been completed. He continued by promising to see to it that all classrooms were finished before the government turned them over to the elementary schools.
