Wilson Sossion: CBC has never been implemented in schools

Former Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary-General Wilson Sossion now claims that the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) has never been implemented in schools across the country.

According to Sossion, the newly introduced curriculum is not competency-based but rather the Outcome Based Education system which focuses on what a learner should be able to do in the real world upon completion of their studies.

CBC, on the other hand, centres on the capability of learners to nurture relevant skills needed for any engagement that they might seek to carry out. 

"What we have in this country under implementation is not CBC as such and I would say that there has never been CBC in our classrooms and teachers are not teaching it, they are teaching the outcome-based curriculum," said Sossion.

"We are cheating ourselves as a country and that is why there are a lot of issues that are coming out, it is automatic."

He was  speaking on Citizen TV’s Day Break Show on Friday.

Sossion added that President William Ruto's recent announcement to set up a task force to resolve concerns pertaining to the curriculum paints a clear picture of how Kenya's education system is currently in shambles.

"For the president to give direction, it means there is a problem. You can see there is an outright public outcry and when a curriculum is not accepted by parents, children are not excited about it and teachers cannot implement it so it is the wrong system," he said.  

While claiming that the CBC system was politically imposed in Kenya, Sossion likewise opined that implementation of the education system was done hurriedly and without any public participation as such it was always destined to fail.

"We did things the wrong way. If we want to succeed let the professionals do their work and design a curriculum that works in a professional manner; this was not done right from the beginning," he said.

"CBC was politically imposed and it was hurriedly implemented. You cannot do a pilot between June 2017 and October the same year without even an evaluation report. We missed many things but now we have an opportunity to remedy this through this review that will be domiciled to correct all this.”

To further push his point across, Sossion noted that when teachers raised their concerns in April 2019, in regards to implementation of the CBC system, their opinions were ignored by the State despite the fact that they were the ones primed to teach the new curriculum.

"When Amina Mohamed, the then Education CS, received a summative evaluation report from experts which said that the country was not ready and that the rollout be postponed it was ignored and she was removed from the Ministry within a few days. Cartels have since taken over this programme for purposes of business," he said.

"What we have in Kenya is meant to take us away from the roadmap of industrialisation and strengthening the African economy."