Kenya-Finland Strategizes On CBC Implementation

NAIROBI,Kenya, Aug, 24 -The Ministry of Education has partnered with the Finland government in a move to enhance the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) in the country.

Partners from the sector will engage in a four-day international conference on co-creating the curriculum to increase innovation for the industry.

The theme of the conference is; co-creation of curriculum, training, policy development and linking education to industry.

Addressing the media during the official opening of the conference, Chief Administrative Secretary Ministry of Education Dr. Sara Ruto said that the delegates will engage in a lot of discussions on the curriculum, the place of assessment and the place of the teacher.

Ruto added that all the key actors will participate in the conference to talk about the important factors affecting the implementation of the curriculum as the government continues implementing the reforms and cementing the competence approach in the country.

“As we know children will transition from grade six to grade seven and it has been a moment for the country since we had to recover from Covid-19 by compressing the curriculum,” said Ruto.

She added that from a planning perspective, the State Department of Curriculum Implementation was set up to foresee and tighten the thinking process of the implementation of the curriculum.

“One of the key things we are focusing on is the construction of classrooms to ensure a seamless transition. The government has also been talking with various actors, many of which are said to have established institutions; capacities in existing schools have also been expanded,” she added.

The CAS assured members of the public that everything is in control, because for the past years the government has been focusing on attaining 100 percent transition, and now the most important aspect is ensuring there is seamless transition.

Ruto noted that there is also a need for uniform quality across learning institutions adding that the Ministry has identified some of the equity markers to ensure every school irrespective of its location has equal resources to other schools that will allow the curriculum implementation to go on uniformly.

She said that the government has identified some schools and the money that is given to the schools as capitation is supposed to ensure learning is done well through the provision of needed facilities.

“Increasing equality among schools is about giving more resources but also sharing information because most of the challenges we have can actually be resolved with a lot of community support from the private sector,” said Ruto.

Principal Secretary State Department for University Education and Research Ambassador Simon Nabukwesi said that they have partnered with Finland government as it is very advanced in implementing CBC system as it has undergone several reviews and it is perfectly serving the nation in terms of being transformative in relation to the socio-economic development of the country.

“We have partnered with them so that the best of their practices can be borrowed into our institutions and system of education,” said Nabukwesi.

Director at Tampere University of Applied Sciences Carita Prokki said that the Finland government has collaborated with the Kenyan government in terms of bringing higher education students to Finland to study nursing, risk management and physiotherapy under the Finnish system of Education.