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.
Magoha also dismissed the notion that the CBC meant that students joined high schools at a young age, and that the teachers were not trained well to handle the students. He noted that some secondary schools had admitted students as young as 12 years old in the 8-4-4 system.
“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.
Magoha also offered his opinion on the problem of candidates for elective office submitting forged degree credentials to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) for approval.
He warned lawmakers that no court would grant them degrees and said that institutions have the authority to certify degrees. The CS believed that the procedure of certifying academic publications should be simple, but that politics had made it difficult.
“A judge cannot give you a degree. As a Vice Chancellor I cross-checked many degrees and it would only take a phone call, if you put politics aside, then it is a very simple process,” he noted.
The straight-talking CS added that the saga was sending the wrong message to children – with the requirement forcing even those seeking politics to do anything to do anything to obtain the academic certificate
“You do not have to go to the university to be thinking. Do you only think that people with degrees think smart? the answer is no! What that has done is to push everybody else to try and get a degree by all means,” he remarked.
The comments were made following challenges to Johnson Sakaja, a UDA candidate for governor, and Wavinya Ndeti, a Wiper candidate, over their eligibility to run for governor of Machakos and Nairobi, respectively.
