The Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) Report has recommended that “Quality Assurance and Standards functions at the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) should be transferred wholly to the Ministry of Education.”
If implemented, the Cabinet Secretary for Education shall reclaim sole authority and power to oversee curriculum management process. For avoidance of doubt, curriculum implementation at the school level is part and parcel of education policy, curricular, standards and examinations in line with the Constitution 2010 in Schedule IV.
The framers of the Constitution did not envisage emasculating the policymaking power of the Cabinet Secretary of education by entrenching TSC in the Constitution.
Curriculum management starts with a statement or an assumption of the aims of schooling embodied in a National Curriculum Policy. At this stage, educational philosophy and practice is taken into consideration.
The second stage is the formulation of curriculum design followed by curriculum implementation. It is at this stage that the authorities prepare teachers to enable them deliver the curriculum in a way that will most benefit students.
The curriculum also contains a statement of how the workings in the schools is to be evaluated.
Quality assurance and standards is at the core of all these processes but is much more pronounced at the school level where the curriculum is implemented.
This is where inspection and supervision of teaching and learning comes in. Inspection and supervision ensures a quality learning environment, quality content in terms of the planned and the taught curriculum, learners’ attendance and attention to instruction, the teacher standards which is conditional to quality teaching and learning and teacher attendance in the classroom.
It also covers the quality of assessment and evaluation methods that teachers use to measure the performance and progress of individual students.
In principle, TSC cannot assess the quality and standards of teaching and learning. It does not own the curriculum and is not answerable to the citizens on the educational outcomes that a national assessment system delivers.
TSC enjoys operational autonomy to manage the human resources functions for basic education: to recruit and employ registered teachers; to assign employed teachers in any public school or institution, to promote and transfer teachers, to exercise disciplinary control over teachers and to terminate the employment of teachers.
It is the Cabinet Secretary for Education who authorizes the curriculum and it lies within his/her powers to assess the quality of teaching that is taking place.
Curriculum Management Process is fundamentally concerned with effective teaching and learning. The process consists of managing what students are expected to learn, evaluating whether or not it was learned, and seeking ways to improve student learning. These functions are under the purview of the Ministry of Education.
The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and Kenya National Examinations Council handle curriculum development and assessment respectively.
Quality and standards in education go beyond the instructional quality of the teacher. It covers the quality of learning environment, learner attendance, readiness and disposition to learn, quality and availability of curriculum materials and the quality of instructional leadership.
The Minister for Education must have control over the teacher who implements the curriculum content to the learner.
Inspection and supervision of operations of basic education from one seat of authority will address the overlapping bureaucracies that TSC created at its headquarters and in the field.
Before the creation of TSC as a Constitutional body, it had a department responsible for going through reports done by the Ministry’s Quality Assurance and Standards Department and by school audit. The Department advised the top management of TSC and school Boards of Management on what action was to be taken on these reports.
The Ministry and TSC worked as one for efficiency and effectiveness in curriculum delivery. Currently, roles between TSC and the MoE overlap, creating a competition which has currently affected the management of basic education.
The recommendation to strip the TSC of the Quality Assurance and Standards function will restore sanity in the management of basic education in the country going forward.
By Majani Baridi
The writer is a Retired Provincial Director of Education, Quality Assurance and Standards
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