During Baringo High School’s 60th anniversary celebration on Friday, May 30, Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Bitok boasted of Kenya’s new Competence Based Education, as the best the world has ever seen, Citizen Digital reported on May 31, 2025.
“Education Principal Secretary Julius Bitok has termed the Competency-Based Education (CBE) as ‘the best education system in the world,’ citing its focus on nurturing learners’ individual passions and talents,” the story stated, adding that the government aims at the new system producing a more capable and self-driven generation.
Journalists should take the remarks of the PS with a pinch of salt, coming amid growing frustration from teachers and parents over the government’s failure to publish clear guidelines for selecting learning pathways, an essential part of the new system.
“The uncertainty has fueled anxiety in schools as 1.2 million learners prepare to transition from Grade 9 to Grade 10,” the Citizen Digital added.
In response, the Ministry of Education has convened over 1,000 stakeholders to refine and guide the implementation of CBE and has pledged to recruit more teachers to ensure the system is well-facilitated and effectively rolled out.
The Daily Nation, in a May 3, 2025, story headlined, ‘40,000 teachers to be hired by 2026 as shortage persists,’ quoted PS Bitok as saying the government would recruit 24,000 more teachers in 2025, and an additional 16,000 starting 2026, as part of a five-year plan of employing 116,000 teachers.
This comes as the National Assembly Committee on Education proposed an allocation of Sh7.3bn to the Budget and Appropriations Committee last week, ahead of 2025-26 budget reading.
“The funds will go towards converting 20,000 intern teachers to permanent positions starting July,” the Nation reported.
But despite this move, still, journalists should look ahead.
While implementers of the new system aim is to create learners who competently apply their skills and talents to add value in the community through technology, innovation, creativity and research, journalists should now start interrogating the political class, whose actions and policy decisions would very much influence the socio-economic performance of the country, in which the new generation of learners will operate.
Journalists should use the challenges the country is currently facing to expose what might affect the robust absorption of the millions of talents who are expected to start graduating from the CBE system.
For example, what infrastructure does the government need to put in place to enable the CBE generation to immediately enter the job market at various levels of education exit?
With their brand new skills, how selectively might the market treat them, different from others who went through different systems of education?
This question is fundamental, coming at the time the economy is underperforming, and is experiencing a high level of underutilised skilled youth.
While it is one thing to produce competent learners full of energy and skills for the market, it is another for the existing leadership and governance to improve the economy, so that new talents and skills will be accommodated to engage in rewarding activities, resulting in the country’s accelerated development.
Ultimately, people receive a competent education so that they can transform their lives, first, even as they also solve others’ problems, consequently improving a country’s economy.
The CBE needs participation of all the leadership, not just educationists, to brainstorm regularly on the direction it is taking.
The media should interrogate experts and other development stakeholders on the steps Kenya should be taking to build the economy in anticipation for the CBE graduates, at all levels of their departure from the classroom.
