Its now clear that teachers who intend to continue teaching in primary and secondary schools must complete a one-year required retraining programme to conform with the new curriculum’s demands.
This is one of the proposals in the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms’ (PWPER) draught report.
The task force members now want teacher retraining to coincide with the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) in the new proposals.
The team claims that retraining will equip teachers with knowledge on how to use the CBC, which has been in place for seven years.
The task force, on the other hand, suggests that the training be conducted by the Ministry of Education, a departure from the former structure in which CBC trainings were given by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
According to task force sources, the transfer of training responsibilities from TSC to the ministry should take no more than a year from the time the plans are adopted.
The committee also suggests that the Ministry of Education set standards for how all teachers who graduated before 2023 must receive required retraining in order to comply with curricular revisions.
The team proposes that a teacher who fails to complete the obligatory retooling be barred from teaching. This essentially indicates that those who do not complete the retraining may be out of work.
However, the draft report does not specify whether the government will cover the costs of retraining or whether teachers will be required to pay for their own.
Teachers’ unions have been campaigning for government financing on this issue.
According to task force members, they determined that the implementation of the CBC faced obstacles primarily due to insufficient teacher capacity and preparedness.
Some stakeholders, according to the members, described TSC’s CBC trainings as “superficial, hurried, and conducted by unqualified trainers.”
The stakeholders also chastised TSC trainers for taking contradictory methods to interpreting curriculum designs and failing to provide thorough responses to inquiries.
The team recommended the formation of a single teaching college called as the Kenya Teachers Training College as part of the idea to redesign teaching in Kenyan schools; all other TTCs will be campuses.
The report also advises lowering the entry grade to teacher training institutes in underserved areas, the details of which remain unknown.