(Solomon Munene National Vice Chairman for Kenya Private School Association (KPSA) the umbrella boardy for private schools in Kenya. KPSA’s mandate is to engage stakeholders and the government and people to build and organize capacity building for its members across the country)

I am delighted on behalf of KPSA to be part of this great official launch of CBE International and Africa Nazarene University partnership. I’m delighted to learn that Africa Nazarene’s University core values ; character, competence and community are close to the pillars of the new competency based curriculum which are character, creativity and community learning.
Kindly allow me to express my appreciation to the organizers of this great platform aimed at collaboration on training and dissemination of approved curriculum. At KPSA we are in support of all initiatives that are geared towards successful dissemination of the new curriculum all the way from the basic education to the higher education level.

This event is being held here at African Nazarene University which is one of the 36 private universities in Kenya. Personally, I am a product of a private university that is Daystar University, so talking about higher education, I am aware that universities and TVETs are now required and have begun to realign their training courses and programs to the competency based curriculum.

A New Dawn for The Education Sector

The teaching methodology under CBC is a radical departure from the 8-4-4 teaching methodology which is teacher centered and most of our teachers have learnt through the 8-4-4 structure of education and trained in it. It will therefore take a sustained capacity building process of our teachers and a new way of training our teachers a the teacher’s colleges and universities must continuously be reviewed to ensure that our teachers are retooled in the most effective way.

The MOE and the Teacher’s Service Commission (TSC) need to liaise and collaborate with other institutions to ensure that retooling of teachers is done continuously and in a relevant and sustained manner. We must also focus in continuous improvement of our infrastructure and acquire relevant teaching materials. The government must deliberately increase budgetary allocation for increased hiring of teachers, infrastructure and learning materials.
Teachers must also be willing to be innovative and improvise as much as possible, use local materials, and involve learners in sourcing out learning materials because this enhances creativity, innovation, and problem solving skills among learners and since a lot of funding is required for effective implementation of the new curriculum, we as the private sector are willing to partner with the government and other stakeholders to successfully implement the new curriculum.

PPPs are a new necessity

This brings me to the recommendation made by the Professor Ojiambo report of 2012 that recommended among others, a collaboration between the government and the private sectors in matters education. Public private partnership (PPPs) in education is a mutual collaboration between the government and the private sector that could help reduce public spending, increase access, equality and equity in the provision of education in Kenya. In this case, the private sector is instrumental in supplementing the government effort in providing services in the education sector.
PPPs have been adopted widely internationally over the last two decades to enable government obtain greater value of the investment in education. Sessional Paper Number 1 of 2019 recommended the establishment of a revolving fund for lending to education entrepreneurs at a marginal interest rate. This reduced the public financing on education and consequently increased access, equity and equality of education in both public schools and private schools.
From the foregoing therefore, I wish to make some specific recommendations that in my opinion if considered will help us to realize successful and sustained implementation of the new curriculum whose aim is to place Kenya on the right trajectory to address the 21st Century and beyond.