The Kenyan government has established a new state department in the ministry of Education to oversee curriculum reforms through the implementation of the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC).
While unveiling the new state department, President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Wednesday that the new department has been mandated to oversee the roll out of the new education system including the recommendations of a taskforce report dubbed ‘Enhancing Access, Relevance and Quality for Effective Curriculum Reforms Implementation’.
While presiding over the unveiling of the taskforce report President Kenyatta said CBC will make Kenya’s education system responsive to the demands of the modern world. He rallied Kenyans to back the process.
“The Taskforce has made several recommendations and consulted widely including through 11 sector-based pre-conferences. This is important because it underscores my Administration’s commitment to adhere to the tenets of public participation, as envisioned in our constitution.
“In this regard, to ensure effective implementation of these recommendations, and other curriculum reforms, I have on this 9th Day of February, 2021 set my hand and presidential seal and established a new State Department for Implementation of Curriculum Reforms vested in the Ministry of Education,” President Kenyatta declared.
He said the country is at a tipping-point with its education system where the old must give way to the new.
“It requires us to be bold, and not rigid. It calls us to imagine a system that creates responsible citizens as opposed to subjects; a system that celebrates the creative potential of all our children as opposed to one that leaves them with labels of failure, if they do not pass exams.”
“And a system that brings about freedom as opposed to conformity. This is the promise of the Competency Based Curriculum,” the President said.
President Uhuru said,“The purpose of the new system of ‘Learning to Learn’ is to allow our children to explore, innovate and unshackle their minds from the old and rigid molds of learning. This way they will be able to exploit their imagination, creativity, solve problems, use critical thinking, apply digital literacy, and feel a sense of civic duty as citizens.”