“What is basic Education?”
This is one of the questions, among many others, members of a delegation from Uganda raised during a benchmarking tour on Kenya’s education reform initiatives, asked their Kenyan counterparts.
The delegation, which visited Kenya in September 2023, was led by Commissioner for Education and Standards at the Ministry of Education and Sports, Dr. Cleophas Mugenyi.
A member of the delegation asked the question when Ministry of Education officials met them on the first day of their visit at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD).
The question came after the delegation was told that the government had organized the Ministry of Education into three State Departments; the State Department of Basic Education, the State Department of Technical, Vocation Education and Training, and finally, the State Department of Higher Education and Research.
Structurally, Basic Education refers to pre-primary, primary and secondary tiers of education. That is what comes to our minds when we refer to Basic Education, which is under the Principal Secretary for Basic Education, Dr. Belio Kipsang’.
However, the phrase ‘Basic Education’ is much more than structure. It condenses an idea about education that laypeople—those who are not educationists—may not be aware of.
The idea is that education, properly considered, involves the learning, the mastering of basic skills, the arts, and sciences that have been useful in the past and—properly curated and taught—remain useful in the future.
Implied in this perspective to education is that there are some essential skills that have contributed to the survival, well-being and safety of the human race as whole. The skills in question are reading, writing, arithmetic and civilized social behavior. The belief is that all these skills should be embedded in every sound elementary and primary curriculum. At secondary school level the basic curriculum should consist of the arts and humanities, Mathematics, Sciences and languages.
Education finance, teacher education, universal access and equity in education, and infrastructural needs of schools, among others rightly dominate discourse among policy and opinion leaders. They are critical to the delivery of education as a service. They are necessary in creating the right teaching and learning environment.
However, the discourse is in the light of the overriding goal: imbuing the learners with basic or essential skills which are the foundation of quality education in its own right and as a preparation for work and advanced education and training after the 12 years of learning.
The core of education at this level is concerned with what an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality Clifton Fadiman, referred to as subjects having generative power.
“Among these subjects are those that deal with language, whether or not one’s own; forms, figures, and numbers; the laws of nature; the past; and the shape and behavior of our common home, the earth. Apparently, these master or generative subjects, endow students with the ability to learn the higher, more complex developments of these master subjects as well as the minor or self-terminating ones,” Fadiman argues in his The Case for Basic Education, written under the auspices of the Council for Basic Education, an advocacy organization that stood for a rigorous curriculum in American schools in its heydays.
In so far as it refers to basic skills, the phrase Basic Education underscores the critical role literacy and numeracy plays in quality learning and also in the impact it has on preparing children to effectively participate in the political economy of the country and the world as a whole.
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Basic skills, which are implied in the idea of Basic Education, are the key to quality education. It is the foundation stone for education excellence anywhere in the world.
It is the reason why the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER), chaired by Prof. Raphael Munavu pitched for enhanced focus on foundational skills—literacy and numeracy skills—in CBC.
Inculcation of basic skills in learners has attracted policy makers for many years around the world. Other countries have been equally alive to the central place basic skills play in the education of the next generation of leaders.
It was so important that it formed the theme of Primer Prime Minister of England, James Callaghan speech, in Ruskin College Oxford on 18 October 1976.
The Prime Minister observed: “Both of the basic purposes of education require the same essential tools. These are basic literacy, basic numeracy, the understanding of how to live and work together, respect for others, respect for the individual. This means requiring certain basic knowledge, skills and reasoning ability.”
Basic skills remain on the table of education policy in England. It is likely to remain because that is the staple of education.
It is the reason why, as late as September last year, England’s Chief Inspector of the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), now retired, Amanda Spielman noted “And there’s one particular aspect of curriculum that I’d like to talk about today. Reading with fluency is the gateway to almost all learning. Without reading, there is little science, no history, no geography. So, we should champion reading as a vital life skill; reading to learn; reading for advancement; reading to expand horizons; reading for pleasure.”
In their The 90% Reading Goal, Lynn Fielding, Nancy Kerr and Paul Rossier argued that the harshest handicap society can impose on children in school is to fail to teach them by third grade to read well.
“When we fail, the child fails. We create for her or him a cycle of continued failure, diminished self-esteem, lowered self-expectations and decreased effort,” they noted
The National Education association, a USA based organization, says that children who fail to acquire adequate reading skills are at risk for increased difficulties such as poor grades, a dislike of school, frustration, low self-esteem and behavioral problems.
The US Department of Education report, What works, Research about teaching and learning says that business leaders report that the best preparation for a technical and vocational job in a volatile job market—as new technologies make old job skills obsolete—lie in reading, writing, mathematics and reasoning. Yes. Basic Education. Basic skills.
In designating a State Department for Basic Education, the framers of the organisation of the administration of former President Uhuru Kenyatta administration and now, President William Samoei Ruto administration had a definite conception of what the lowest tier of Education—primary and secondary education—should do for the country. To impart the generative power in learners—with the aim of bestowing “students with the ability to learn the higher, more complex developments of master subjects as well as the minor or self-terminating ones”.
They need these basic skills, whatever they choose to become and do with their lives.
By Kennedy Buhere
The writer is the Communications Officer at the Ministry of Education.
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