KCPE Exams to be Abolished as Govt Unveils 3 Specialization Areas for Secondary School Students
On Saturday, July 1, the areas of concentration for high school seniors were made public by the Ministry of Education through the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD).
When the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) is completed in November 2023, the KICD will have been the guiding light.
At the close of KESSHA’s 46th Annual Conference, held at Mombasa’s Sheikh Zayed Hall, the new regulations were announced.
Indimuli Kahi, chairman of the Kenya Secondary School Head Teachers Association, told Kenyans.co.ke that the CBC will benefit from the addition of the three specialization areas of Arts and Sport Science, Social Sciences, and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
According to Indimuli, both the performing and visual arts will be included in the Arts track, while the social sciences, languages, humanities, and business will be given special emphasis.
“For STEM pathway, students will have the opportunity to pursue pure, applied, technical, and engineering sciences as well as career and technology studies,” he told said.
According to Indimuli, school administrators have already begun making serious plans to guarantee their institutions are prepared for the upcoming changes by the year 2026.
Indimuli claims that KICD mandates that schools provide students with two distinct educational pathways. However, stakeholders advocated for all national schools to provide kids with access to all three options.
Indimuli disclosed that “60% of students in a school should be enrolled in STEM, 25% in social sciences, and the rest in the arts.”
KICD has given secondary institutions the responsibility of becoming ready for the first senior high school pupils to enroll in the year 2026. It also instructed them to restructure their programs and courses in light of the new options being made available.
Indimuli revealed that “capacity building of the staff based on the pathways picked” will be part of an evaluation of the academic staff’s abilities.
Last but not least, institutions were tasked with evaluating their institutional and instrumental capacity in relation to the selected pathway.
Other decisions reached during KESSHA included allocating capitation funds in the ratio of 50:30:20 between the first and third periods and the government hiring an additional 25,000 teachers.
The Ministry of Education was allotted Ksh628.6 billion in the 2023/24 budget, with a portion of the sum designated to pay for the hiring of new teachers.
“In the next financial year, we will hire an additional teachers. It is crucial that we deploy these teachers in our schools in a manner that reflects equity,” Education CS Ezekiel Machogu stated in June 2023.
KCPE Exams to be Abolished as Govt Unveils 3 Specialization Areas for Secondary School Students