Parents and leaders in Tana Delta Sub-county, Tana River, are demanding a relook into the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), saying it is expensive for rural families.
They claim that many schools in the area are struggling to implement the CBC as they lack enough and necessary resources for Junior School (JS).
Ibrahim Boba, the head teacher of Kikomo Comprehensive School, said that they are now dependent on projects funded by the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NGCDF) of Garsen Constituency and donors like the World Bank, which is constructing two classrooms for JS.
“We don’t have enough classrooms compared to the learners and we need infrastructure such as laboratories, which are essential in the implementation of CBC but we lack the capacity to build one,” he said.
He added that the candidates who sat their Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) were also too young to join JS.
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Madina Wara, a parent at Kikomo Primary School, said CBC is financially too heavy for them especially because they come from a rural setting where getting even a meal is difficult.
“Most parents are poor without jobs but our children when they come home, they say that they have been told to go with food items for practical lessons yet most families don’t even have enough to eat,” she said.
Speaking after launching the construction of two classrooms at Odole Comprehensive School in Tana Delta area, Garsen MP Ali Wario said that dependence on NGCDF alone for infrastructural development in schools was not viable and called on the ministry to increase capitation so that the managements can develop what is needed in their respective schools.
“NGCDF is not enough for all schools in the constituency and there is need to increase capitation because the funds sent to schools is too little for the implementation of CBC, which is a new system in Kenya,” he said.
By Nehemiah Okwembah
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