Nairobi Kenya — Former Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary General Wilson Sossion now claims the curriculum being taught in schools has never been 'competency-based' but 'outcome-based.'
During an interview with Citizen TV on Friday, Sossion alleged that Kenyans are deluding themselves since the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) was not approved by parents and children, thus it is incorrect.
"What we have in this country, what we have under implementation is not CBC as such. There has never been CBC in our classroom," he said. "Teachers have never been teaching CBC, they are teaching outcome-based curriculum."
According to Sossion, the country made a mistake as evidenced by the growing problems and loud outcry against the CBC saying the professionals should have been given the freedom to develop and design an effective program.
"We are cheating ourselves as a country because there has never been CBC in our classes, teachers are teaching outcome-based curriculum," he stated.
"When a curriculum is not accepted by parents and children are not excited about it, it's a wrong curriculum."
Sossion continued by claiming that the CBC was hastily and politically imposed and that there had been no discussions or summative evaluation of the curriculum.
"You cannot do a pilot between June 2017, and you end the piloting in October 2017 without even a summative evaluation report and you are talking of ruling it out the next year," he said.
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"We missed many things, and we will continue missing. Now we have an opportunity to remedy this through this committee review that taskforce will be domiciled to the president."
The fate of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) now lies with a task force set to be launched next week by new President William Ruto who took over leadership on Tuesday.
Ruto said he will set up a Task Force to establish the viability of the program launched by his predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta in 2018.
The program has been heavily criticized by stakeholders who accused Kenyatta's administration of failing to involve them in its formulation.
The system was designed to replace 8-4-4.
"There is a robust conversation on education and in particular the implementation of the CBC curriculum. Public participation is critical in this matter, and I will establish an education reform task force which will be launched in the following weeks," President Ruto said, breathing fresh air into the sector that has witnessed numerous changes in the past years when he served as Deputy President under Kenyatta.
