- TVET institutions have made genuine progress under the TVET Act, with TVETA enforcing compliance through closure notices, quality audits, and TVET CDACC taking over competency-based assessment from KNEC.
- RPL has moved from a paper provision to a lived one, with TVETA issuing standards to operationalise section 43 and institutions increasingly embedding dual and work-based learning models into curricula.
- Institutions have been urged to strengthen resource mobilisation through the TVET Fund, build genuine industry incubation hubs, and deliberately reach vulnerable learners rather than treating inclusion as a line in admission policy.
During the Katiba Day celebrations on August 27, 2026, I watched keenly as keynote speakers offered their personal opinions on the extent of our success in implementing the Constitution, 16 years later. I was particularly glued to the screen when it was time for His Excellency the President to respond to questions from the press. I wasn’t comfortable, to say the least, with the first question the journalist asked. He began by asking the President whether he was aware that his Cabinet was unconstitutional. I was embarrassed, not because I hold brief for that office, but because I immediately reflected on all public servants: those of us who hold office, carry responsibility, and owe the public a demonstration of how faithfully we implement the 2010 Constitution. For the big office, he had exceeded his expectations.
I imagined myself in a staffroom, with all teaching and non-teaching staff present, and a member standing up and telling me, “Mr. Deputy, don’t you realise you are wrong in X and Y and Z?” As the President was responding, I turned the question inward. To what extent have I been faithful to our Constitution, in my classroom, with my clients? How have we managed our time, our finances, and our human resources? How have we upheld our fidelity to the TVET Act, the very law that gives shape and legitimacy to the work we do every day in technical and vocational training? Are there things that need implementing that haven’t been implemented? The honest answer is yes, and Katiba Day is precisely the occasion to say so out loud rather than quietly.
The Constitution does not ask us merely to comply with the law; it asks us, under Article 10, to embody transparency, accountability, and public participation in everything we do. The TVET Act, Cap. 210A, was enacted in that same constitutional spirit, to guarantee access, equity, quality, and relevance in technical training for every Kenyan. And yet, thirteen years after its commencement, I must ask myself candidly: is our institution’s implementation of that Act as complete as the Constitution demands?
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Have we, as heads of institutions, filed our annual self-evaluation reports as section 41 requires, not as a formality, but as a genuine account of our stewardship? Have we built internal quality systems as section 33 envisages, or do we wait for TVETA’s audit team to tell us what we should already know about ourselves? Have we integrated attachments and internships meaningfully, as section 39 demands, or do we still send trainees into industry with a letter and a prayer? Have we been faithful custodians of public funds entrusted to us, in the same spirit that Article 232 demands of every public officer, that is, efficient, economical, and accountable use of resources?
These are not questions for the President alone to answer before a national television audience. They are questions each of us, Principal, Deputy Principal, HOD, trainer, procurement officer, Finance Officer, board member, must ask in our own staffroom mirror. Katiba Day cannot only be a day of assessing the three arms of government; it must also be a day of personal audit. If I am unsettled by a journalist’s question to the President, I should be equally unsettled by the same question turned toward my own docket.
So today, as we mark this day, I choose not merely to celebrate the Constitution as an abstract national achievement, but to recommit, quietly, deliberately, to being more faithful in the small, unglamorous places where implementation actually happens: in how I manage my department’s time, in how transparently I account for resources, in how fully I have operationalized the TVET Act that governs my daily work. Because in the end, national fidelity to the Constitution is not built at podiums. It is built, one staffroom at a time, one honest self-appraisal at a time, by public servants willing to ask themselves the uncomfortable question before anyone else asks it for them.
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If I am honest about where the fidelity gap is widest, and where the credit is genuinely due, a fuller picture emerges. TVETA has shown real teeth in exercising its enforcement mandate under sections 33 to 37: institutions have been issued closure notices for non-compliance, and quality audits are being conducted and disseminated back to institutions rather than filed away quietly. That is fidelity to the Act in action, and we should say so plainly rather than only naming gaps.
Recognition of Prior Learning, too, has moved from a paper provision to a lived one; TVETA has issued standards and guidelines specifically to operationalise section 43, and dual and work-based learning models are increasingly being written into curricula rather than left to chance. I am also mindful of the quiet transformation that has taken place in how we assess and certify our trainees. TVET CDACC has taken over from KNEC the responsibility for skill-centred, competency-based assessment, a shift that has moved us away from purely theoretical examination toward proof of actual competence, which is exactly what sections 44 and 45 of the Act envisaged.
This is progress worth acknowledging. Yet fidelity demands we ask the harder question too: as assessment becomes more decentralised and practical, are we reinforcing examination integrity with the same seriousness we once reserved for centralised national exams? A competency-based system is only as credible as the honesty of the institution administering it, and that responsibility now sits more squarely on our own shoulders than it ever did under KNEC. These are genuine strides, hopefully so for those who have practised examination integrity principles, and Katiba Day should let us celebrate them honestly, not just interrogate ourselves.
But three questions remain squarely within our own power to answer, not Parliament’s. First, the TVET Fund established under section 47 was designed to mobilise resources for institutions; how successful are we on this front? I am encouraged that a review of the funding model is underway. I will keep my own thoughts on its details close for now, but I hold a quiet hope that this review translates into the kind of relief that brings more of our young people back through our gates.
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Second, can we build genuine industry hubs within our own institutions, incubation spaces where trainers, trainees, and local enterprises co-create, test, and commercialise real solutions, rather than treating “linkage with industry” as a courtesy visit once a year? Nothing in the Act forbids this; section 7(o) and section 29(h) on resource mobilisation already give institutional leadership the mandate to pursue exactly this kind of enterprise. This does not require managers. It requires transformative leaders. Third, and perhaps most searching of all: are we deliberately reaching the vulnerable, the learner with a disability, the girl from a marginalised community, the young person who left formal schooling early, or does our compliance with Article 27 and section 3(1) of the Act begin and end with a line in our admission policy?
Fidelity to the Constitution was never meant to be passive. It asks us to raise funds we haven’t yet raised, to build hubs we haven’t yet built, and to find learners we haven’t yet found. An increased enrollment, made possible by a fairer and more sustainable funding proposal, would be one of the clearest signs yet that fidelity to the Constitution and fidelity to the TVET Act are, in the end, the same commitment lived out in different rooms. My prayer is that the TVET room would shine brighter and more gloriously.
By Dr. Wilberforce Manoah Jahonga
Dr. Wilberforce Manoah Jahonga is the Deputy Principal Academics at Bushiangala Technical Training Institute.
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