The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) will decrease the number of learning areas for students enrolled in the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) beginning in January 2024.
The recommendations of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) were approved by President William Ruto on Tuesday, August 1, 2023, and immediate implementation was ordered.
The report states that students using the new curriculum will have fewer topics beginning in the first term of the following year. For Grades One through Three, the learning areas will drop from nine to seven.
Additionally, the number of learning areas will decrease from 12 to 8 for grades 4 through 6, and from 14 to 9 for grades 7 through 9.
Preschool through grade six will have five learning areas, and grades seven through twelve will have seven.
Only the new number of lessons for Junior School (Grades Seven, Eight, and Nine) have been released thus far by KICD. The new learning areas for other Grades will be released by KICD as soon as possible.
The new junior high school mandatory and elective classes are listed below. Health education and life skills were two courses that were dropped.
Additionally, students used to choose two optional subjects in the past, but only one optional subject is required today.
COMPULSORY SUBJECTS
1) English
2) Kiswahili or Kenya Sign Language (KSL)
3) Mathematics
4) Integrated Science
5) Social Studies
6) Business Studies
7) Agriculture
8) Pre-Technical and Pre-Career Studies
9) Religious Studies Education
i) Christian Religious Education (CRE)
ii) Islamic Religious Education (IRE)
iii) Hindu Religious Education (HRE)
OPTIONAL SUBJECTS
10 In optional subjects a student shall take one subject
i) Visual Arts
ii) Performing Arts
iii) Home Science
iv) Computer Science
v) Other Languages (Indigenous Language, French, Arabic, German, Sign Language)
NOTE
Physical Education (P.E.) shall be offered to all learners as a compulsory to support the development of the Psychomotor Domain.