Parents’ association to defend Competency-Based Curriculum in court
The National Parents Association has said that they will defend a case opposing the Competency-Based Curriculum.
Speaking at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) during an engagement with Education stakeholders on the CBC, NPA Chairman Nicholas Maiyo said that they are in support of the system noting that their concern is the judicial decision that could disrupt children’s education.
Maiyo urged KICD to roll out nationally to every parent the Parental Engagement and Empowerment Manual which was developed.
“We will join the case as parents representing 10 million children in public primary schools. We thus hope that first: whoever brought this suit bears the interests of our children at heart, is a parent with a child or children in public schools, is our member, spoke to us and we responded to them in earnest and is generally honest and sincere to the cause at hand,” he said.
Last week on Friday, Law Society of Kenya (LSK) President Nelson Havi filed a petition in court to stop CBC roll out.
Havi argues that the roll out of the new curriculum primarily on the basis of the Basic Educational Curriculum Framework of 2017 and the Sessional Paper 1 of 2019 on curriculum reform constituted a violation of the Basic Education Act and the Constitution.
“The action by the Education Ministry to implement the new curriculum is unlawful and prejudicial to the future of the children of Kenya and ought to be halted,” read the petition.
Further, he argued that actions by Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha, the Kenya Institute for Curriculum Development (KICD), the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) are unlawful and prejudicial to school-going children.
According to Havi, the Ministry of Education has rolled out a curriculum for basic education purporting to phase out and replace the 8-4-4 system through sessional papers and policy instead of legislation.
Additionally, he says that there’s no identifiable document or instrument upon which the CBC curriculum can be traced as one developed in the manner set out in section 73 and 74 of the Basic Education Act NO. 14 2013 as read together with section 4 of the KICD Act No.4 OF 2013.
Havi says that there is wide public outcry in the manner in which the CBC curriculum has been imported from other jurisdictions without due process of the laws applied in basic education.
However, Education Cabinet Secretary Professor George Magoha maintained that CBC is here to stay and there’s no turning back.
He added that for once, Kenya’s education sector was on the right trajectory by focusing on skills and competencies of learners other than ranking and cut throat competition that has been at the center of the sector for long.
