By Kipkemboi Toroitich
The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) has approved Coding to be part of the syllabus for primary and secondary school children, Education News can now reveal.
This comes as digital spaces proliferate, with the demand for digital content rising with every new day of innovation.
KICD Chief Executive Officer Prof Charles Ong’ondo disclosed this in a letter approving Kodris Africa, a digital solutions firm whose work is to equip learners with skills and competencies relevant to the 21st Century. The company also publishes content online.
“Quality standards have been approved and ready for launch. We have also approved content and support materials,” Prof Ong’ondo said.
The programme will mostly benefit children in primary and lower secondary school, as the curriculum developer looks into subsequent logistics to roll it out to cover the entire secondary level.
“The beauty of the programme is it does not require a teacher trained in ICT. It has an interface that can be administered by any teacher,” said Mugumo Munene, Kodris CEO.
If implemented successfully, Kenya is going to be first country in Africa to have such a school programme embedded in the overall curriculum. The country will be in the league of developed nations like the United States, The united Kingdom, and China, among others.
The aim of the programme is mainly to support learners develop analytical and algorithmic skills, which will eventually help them be tech-savvy to create their own computer programmes.
The Kodris CEO said that the plan is to have homegrown computer programming solutions, which come with immense benefits for both the learner and the country.
He added that the company plans to expand to Uganda, Rwanda and other countries in the region after the pilot scheme in Kenya.
Coding, also known as programming, is interpreting human thinking into a language that the computer understands. It is then that computers can interact with the human interface.
