The Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) has expressed worry that the government may not have invested enough effort in preparing for the Competency-Based Curriculum’s (CBC) debut at the secondary level.
KUPPET has seen a glaring problem of teacher shortage and has recommended the government focus on recruiting more teachers instead of having one-sided preparations of only building more classrooms.
KUPPET Secretary-General Akello Misori said that for the CBC to be a success, an additional 115, teachers should be recruited.
Misori was speaking when he attended the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (KESSHA) national conference that was held at the Sheikh Zayed Children’s Welfare Centre that was held in Mombasa.
“Preparations for junior secondary has been mainly dominated by building of infrastructure. We are having a shortage of teachers yet the government has introduced the one hundred per cent transition,” said Akello Misori.
Misori said that the government has not been engaging in discussion to raise allowances and pay for teachers even though some government employees do enjoy monetary benefits.
“The teachers’ salary review was put on hold because of COVID-19 but the economy has been growing since that time and we can start negotiations with the employer soon,” he said.
Regarding the Teacher Professional Development (TPD), KUPPET called on the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to cover the costs of the training.
He also called on the government to stop the militarization of examinations, arguing that headteachers in charge of test centres must be respected.
“There is an incident where a headteacher was treated badly by security officers on suspicion of examination leakage,” he said.
The Early Learning and Basic Education PS Julius Jwan said that the Ministry of Education takes more than 26 per cent of the national budget. He also said that any raising of funding for the sector could prove to be a challenge.
Dr Jwan also dismissed claims of militarization of examination saying that security officials are only forced to act in cases where cheating has been reported.
More Non-schooling Boys than Girls
Stephen Odebero, the professor of educational planning and head of post-graduate studies at Masinde Muliro University said that out of all the children who are not attending school, 618,117 of them are girls while 712,045 are boys.
“We cannot account for them. Boys who are not attending school are more than girls. The government should invest in doing a survey to conduct a survey on non-schooling children,” said Prof Odebero.
He argued that the large number of children who are not going to school is because of the loss of jobs by parents who are no longer able to pay school fees for their children.