All national schools will offer the three career pathways in senior school due to their capacity, staffing and infrastructure, the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Julius Ogamba, has announced.
Further, the categorisation of schools based on regions will be abolished from next year when learners in Grade 9 transition to Grade 10 in January.
Instead, schools will be classified as either triple pathway or double pathway schools. The three pathways on offer in senior schools are: Social Sciences, Arts and Sports, and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
The CS said the State has already developed guidelines for the transition and placement of students to Grade 10 in January 2026. He said that the abolishment of categorisation of schools as either national, extra-county, county or sub-county schools was a key point of the transition guidelines and that the government will develop adequate infrastructural capacity to handle the three pathways.
“I am sure all of you have been involved in the formulation of the guidelines, which were also subjected to nationwide the formulation of the guidelines, which were also subjected to nationwide discussions last month during the county dialogues,” said Mr Ogamba when he addressed a conference for principals of national schools in Mombasa.
“Based on this, I urge all of the schools represented here to adopt the triple pathway category owing to your superior status in staffing, infrastructure and history of academic performance. Under the arrangement, we will also encourage schools to offer boarding and the day sections,” said Mr Ogamba.
Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba addressing Principals during the Kenya National Schools Principals Forum in Mombasa on April 23, 2025.
Photo credit: Kevin Odit| Nation Media Group
The CEO of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), Nancy Macharia, urged the principals of national schools to adopt the new category given to the learning institutions in stride.
“More particularly, with your overtly superior facilities, I am confident that you will make the difference by offering all three pathways that will define the competency-based curriculum,” she said.
Ms Macharia, who will retire from her position at the commission in two months, said the TSC is doing everything to ensure that all senior school administrators and other teaching staff are adequately retooled to make them ready for the first cohort of Grade 10 students in January 2026.
Since the start of the CBC implementation, Ms Macharia said the commission has retooled 229,292 Primary School teachers, 75,000 junior school and 154,292 secondary school teachers currently teaching Form Two up to Form Four.
“To equip them with the requisite content, skills, competencies, values and attitudes to implement the new curriculum and assessments,” she said.
She said the cascade model teacher training has been carried out through a multiagency approach involving the Ministry of Education, TSC, Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, Kenya National Examinations Council, Kenya Institute of Special Education, KEMI, and Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA).
“As I approach my sunset days at the commission, my head remains high. Expanding the workforce to over 413,000 teachers on permanent and pensionable terms, 20,000 interns and 2,960 secretariat staff, I couldn’t have achieved more at the helm,” she said.
She acknowledged that TSC has institutionalised the process of collective bargaining in the teaching service, and recognised it as the cornerstone of industrial relations.
“It is against this background that we successfully signed and implemented two four-year cycle CBAs - the 2017 -2021 CBA at a cost of Sh54 billion and the 2021-2025 CBA at a cost of Sh18 billion. All of us here today have enjoyed the results of these CBAs,” said Ms Macharia.
The TSC boss said the employer has established stable structures to effectively manage all its resources and assets up to the zonal level.
The priority programmes that require strategic focus include the newly rolled out Remote Learning Methodologies, Digitization and automation of the Commission’s records and functions.
She said the national schools have been the envy of many parents, owing to their consistent, perennial and sustained good performance in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education Examination.
Aside from the academic performance, Ms Macharia said that discipline levels at the schools have been unmatched.
“I can report that they have been a drop in the ocean when compared with some other categories of schools. In fact, we have always had nearly zero cases of student unrest, expulsions, or even teacher brawls among the staff of national schools. This is, indeed, commendable,” she added.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education will today hold a National Conversation on the Competency-Based Education (CBE) System in Kenya at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), Nairobi.
The event will bring together senior government officials led by the CS for Education, principal secretaries, educators, curriculum experts, development partners, parents, as well as learners to deliberate on the implementation of the CBC so far, and the way forward
