First open letter to the fifth president of Kenya - Please fix mess in education sector

Dear Mr President. Congratulations on winning the tight race to the highest office in our motherland. I call you the fifth president more than a month before the elections because voters already know who their choice is. What is left is casting and counting the ballots to unveil you. 

This is the first of four open letters I intend to write to you before you take your oath of office. 

By the end of the series, I hope to have shared ideas that can contribute to solving the most urgent and strategically debilitating problems your regime will confront. Soon you will take over a country teeming with problems, ranging from the high cost of living to the explosion of youth unemployment. 

The exigency of our time, which you must resolve expeditiously, however, is the fiasco that is the implementation of the competency-based curriculum (CBC). 

Disillusioned 

The term “fiasco” is not my own. It is from multiple education stakeholders who are both hopeful and disillusioned. I use this term to underscore the gravity of the problem and seek your personal intervention to forestall the looming CBC-triggered collapse of our education system.

This letter draws your attention to three most crucial issues and suggests some possible solutions. Transition to Junior Secondary: Ideally, junior secondary should have been domiciled in primary school. This would utilise the infrastructure available in those schools and free the government to dedicate its limited funds to hiring, training, and deploying teachers in adequate numbers. 

It would also keep Junior Secondary children, who are too young for boarding school life, in their families. But this is now water under the bridge. 

Assess learners

Thus, you will take over a country facing a severe shortage of secondary school spaces. 
More than 1.4 million learners will exit Grade Six at the end of this year. At a transition rate of 85 per cent, 1,190,000 spaces will be required in Junior Secondary. 

If the more than 450,000 Grade Six learners in private schools continue with their current schools as encouraged by the Ministry of Education, those who remain will require 16,445 classrooms, each taking 45 learners. 

If the government delivers the promised 10,000 classrooms, there will be a shortage of 6,445 classrooms. 

This is besides a shortage of essentials such as toilets (very critical for girl schools), dormitories for the many boarding schools, and dining facilities, all of which haven’t been spoken about yet.

Competency-based Assessment and placement into Junior Secondary School: The placement of learners into Grade Seven is to be determined by their aggregate performance at the end of Grade Six.

Their final score will be a sum of their scores from four assessments: Kenya Early Years Assessment (KEYA), which is done in Grade Three (20 per cent); two School-Based Assessments (SBA) done in Grades Four and Five and contributing 20 per cent each; and Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA), which done in Grade Six (40 per cent). This is good in principle. 

In practice, however, KEYA and SBA assess learners in 11 learning areas. The marks posted on the portal are in those 11 areas. KPSEA will assess learners in five subjects, having combined some learning areas and dropped others.

Train teachers 

Statisticians can confirm that dove-tailing the marks from the 11 learning areas into the five subjects is a potential nightmare. 

Fundamentally, however, and without casting aspersions on the integrity of teachers, there are questions about the reliability of the marks from the SBAs. Tasking teachers whose performance appraisal is based on their learners’ performance to grade the same learners puts them in a serious conflict of interest situation, with adverse implications for the reliability of the marks they generate.

Dysfunction of the basic education sector structures: Randomly speaking to education stakeholers, especially at the sub-national level, one gets the impression that the sector’s structures are dysfunctional – with broken vertical and horizontal communication channels. This dysfunction, thanks to the non-implementation of key sectoral policies and significant sections of the Basic Education Act 2013, has rendered the sector inefficient, costing children and the country quality education.

Specifically, the failure to establish the vital national education board underlines the dysfunction to which multiple failures in the sector can be attributed.

What do I suggest that you do, Mr President? Take charge and do the following:

On transition to Junior Secondary, direct all private primary schools currently established up to Standard Eight to host Grade Seven next year, and ask the responsible education institutions to train private school teachers on CBC Grade Seven content delivery and assessment. 

Also ensure the Ministry of Education gives capitation grants to all learners in Junior Secondary regardless of whether they attend public or private schools.

Final score

In addition, the current Grade Six learners in public primary schools should be placed in sub-county schools to utilise their idle capacity and keep the learners in their families. With most sub-county schools being day, only minimal infrastructural expansion and additional teachers will be required

Finally, place all learners exiting Standard Eight in the other cadre of schools to utilise the so-called CBC classrooms.

On assessment and placement of learners in Junior Secondary School, order an audit of the marks so far uploaded on the portal. 

If found to be unreliable, increase the contribution of KPSEA to the final score to at least 60 per cent. 
The Teachers Service Commission should also align the teacher performance evaluation with the national education sector aspirations to depart from teaching for examinations. 

On the dysfunction of the basic education sector, direct the immediate re-establishment of the national education board.

The education sector carries the future of individuals, communities, and the country with it. Commit to redeeming this sector. 

While at it, Mr President, keep your eyes on the equity implications of all your actions!

Dr Manyasa is Executive Director, Usawa Agenda