Ruto’s CBC Taskforce Repeating Same Mistakes Made During Introduction, Civil Society Warns
President William Ruto’s task team to examine CBC has been criticized by civil society for excluding crucial parties.
The Kenya National Civil Societies Centre stated in a statement released on Sunday that failing to include education sector participants such as tertiary colleges, the Elimu Yetu Coalition, teachers’ unions, and university staff unions will deprive task force recommendations of more ownership.
“The government’s efforts to reform education in the country seem to have started on a wrong footing by repeating the same mistakes made during the introduction of the new curriculum,” the statement signed by KNCSC executive director Suba Churchill said.
According to the center, the new education system must gain public acceptance and support to be successfully implemented.
Churchill stated that the task committee may have unwittingly become a mechanism for rewarding those who supported the regime’s rise to power, rather than addressing the core flaws and teething problems plaguing the new education curriculum.
“Exclusion of key players in the education sector is so glaring and its shortcomings so obvious that they will not be addressed by merely allowing the substantive members of the task force to co-opt them,” he said.
He said by co-opting their representatives, without the authority and influence that comes with being recognized as substantive members of the team, they will be reduced to mere guests of the task force, unable to lobby and push for the acceptance of desirable proposals in the future.
President Ruto appointed a 49-member task team to study the new education system on Friday.
It is one of the largest task forces ever established in Kenya’s political and public governance history, with 42 members and seven additional serving as secretaries.
Churchill stated that while the participation of university professors on the reform committee is appropriate, the exclusion of stakeholders directly active at the CBC’s primary levels does not bode well for the assignment.
“Especially when the task force will form teams to critically look into issues relating to the burden of costs of learning materials that have come to be associated with the CBC.“
Ruto’s CBC Taskforce Repeating Same Mistakes Made During Introduction, Civil Society Warns
