My Take on Education System

My Take on Education System: By Mwalimu James Ngugi

If status quo is maintained, then we expect millions of very young boys and girls to troop to Secondary schools where the “Junior Secondary” is domiciled. Ask any Secondary school teacher and he or she will tell you they are ill prepared and they are hoping this eventuality will not happen. Most parents are apprehensive that their children will move to unfamiliar territories in the next three months. Majority of the education experts have vehemently opined that the introduction of the CBC curriculum and the envisaged education system of 2-6-2-3-3 is not tenable.

In my opinion, I agree that we need to emphasize on building competencies of our learners in preparation to the real world challenges as opposed to spending hours pumping our learners with unnecessary book knowledge. The current system which is hinged on cut throat competition of learners and over emphasis on acquisition of paper qualifications is not helping us much. Its time we change our attitude about schooling! Schools should not be theatres of competitions and arenas of showcasing academic might! Schools should aim at bringing out competent humans regardless of the academically inspired grades. We should test our learners on skills they have embodied in school and not necessarily base our assessments on the grades they scored in school.

Photo: Mwalimu James Ngugi

Having said that, I propose that the current cohort of standard 6 students (Grade 6) remain in Primary school for the next 2 years. Junior secondary school can take 3 years which should be good ground for preparing students for Senior Secondary schools where they will specialize in more or less similar ways as proposed by the CBC model. Senior Secondary can take 3 years. Then University/Tertiary education can take 3 years instead of the current 4.

So in essence, on my take on Education System, I am proposing this form of Education System 2-8-3-3-3.
In all levels the emphasis should be on building competencies of learners. I love the pillars of CBC, namely Citizenship, Communication and Collaboration, Self- efficacy, Critical thinking and Problem Solving, Digital Literacy and Learning to Learn. If we can entrench these competencies in our curriculum without radically changing our education system then we will be home and dry.

Whichever way we look at it, the current cut throat competition amongst learners and teachers must be checked and emphasis should be more on acquisition of skills and not passing exams!