KCPE to be Scrapped Soon; Read the Full Details Below
Education CS George Magoha is warming up towards giving a final directive after the Curriculum Implementation Committee recommended that the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) be scrapped.
A report by the Standard on Thursday, December 10, indicated that the committee has already reached a consensus on doing away with the national exam and replacing it with a grade nine option.
The committee, during a retreat that ended on Tuesday, December 8, in Naivasha, concluded that no national examinations should be offered at the end of Grade Six.
The proposal further indicated that the Grade Nine national exams, which will be administered at the end of the junior secondary school level. It will be used to place the students in senior secondary schools.
The committee also suggested that national assessments should be carried in Grades Four, Six, Nine and 12 instead.
The new assessments, especially the Grade Six version, will be used to gauge the students’ understanding of concepts enshrined in the new Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC).
The Grade 12 exams, on the other hand, will be used to place the students in various universities and colleges across the country.
Under the CBC, learners are expected to spend two years in pre-primary, six in primary, three in junior secondary and another three in senior secondary school.
The new development comes even as the state grapples with the question of how students will be allocated in secondary schools after Grade Six exams are scrapped.
On Friday, December 4, the committee was instructed by Magoha to draw criteria that will be used to post children in secondary schools.
The CS had also made it clear that he needed a transition roadmap of how secondary will be split into junior and senior secondary.
Prior to the pandemic, the new education system that was rolled out by the Ministry of Education mandated a 17-year-stay in school as opposed to the 8-4-4 system which totalled 16 years.
The committee was formed to address the challenges faced by the Education Ministry in scrapping off KCPE.
