The Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) has claimed that the decision of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) to deviate from the initial plan of implementing the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) that had guided the curriculum for five years without considering its recommendations was a mistake.
According to KUPPET, the government should domicile JSSs in secondary schools since the State Department for Early Learning and Basic Education had already invested in addressing some of the shortfalls that have come about as a result of the transition.
The Teachers’ union believes that keeping learners in primary schools for a duration beyond the next school holiday is equivalent to wasting the whole academic year.
KUPPET officials argued that it is common sense to build classrooms in secondary schools which already had laboratories instead of creating whole new infrastructures like laboratories in primary schools.
In their view indicators of the crisis that is building includes ineffective delivery of the curriculum in public schools.
They said that the government has so far posted one teacher per school, grossly overburdening in handling nine lessons per day covering 14 compulsory learning areas.
In addition, primary schools where the JSS is domiciled do not have critical infrastructure meant for the JSS including libraries, including libraries and facilities that can be used for extra-curricula activities.
KUPPET also wants a thorough crisis management of the JSS to be carried out saying that only a stakeholder meeting can address the problem before they turn into a full-blown crisis.
The KUPPET National Chairman Omboko Milemba chipped in on the issue saying that the country is not late to correct controversies that were identified in the past month.