The government has been challenged invest in requisite digital infrastructure to entrench teaching systems inside ICT-based digital platforms to hasten alignment of education reforms towards innovation.
Education and communication technology experts called for deep entrenchment of the infrastructure into the curriculum at all levels of education to create a basic foundation and eventually peg all programmes into the platforms.
They termed the current pace of access to available platforms as piecemeal and hugely unfavourable to majority of rural areas where internet connection is poor and cost of bundles too high.
Former Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary General Wilson Sossion said the piecemeal improvement of infrastructure should be avoided as it would create regional imbalances.
He described the pace at which the government was implementing education reforms and especially in digitization of teaching as too slow to result in any immediate meaningful reforms.
The launch of two hotspots per county as has already happened in two TVET institutions in Embu, experts say, almost created an impression of rationed provision of digital technology availability.
Leading cyber security expert, Sam Wambugu stressed the need of sharing infrastructure, expertise and skills even as the government carried the task to focus on teaching digital skills and education to students and the youth across the country.
“Private firms could come up with new and innovative ideas and share expertise and resources while the government focuses on teaching digital skills and education to young people,” said Wambugu.
He added: “The government should integrate technology into schools offering training programmes to impart digital skills and supporting lifelong learning”.
Away from schools, the expert said that by investing in peoples’ digital knowledge and skills, the government could help them take advantage of the digital economy and all the opportunities it offers.
On his part, Sossion said that internet connection and equipment provision should be the first step in ensuring learners right from early stage to university have access to information and data through online platforms.
The former KNUT boss termed the current packages being provided under digital hubs in technical institutions as haphazard, discriminating and targeted Kenyans who were already learning in these colleges.
Data bundles and internet connections, the educationist said, should be a right to Kenyans and especially young learners whose pace of success in any education theoretical or technical depend nearly entirely how well they were equipped digitally.
He warned that unless reforms in the education had a digital focus, Kenyans would be left behind in embracing the already emerging third industrial revolution hugely rooted in availability of digital platforms.
Since the government formed the Presidential Working Party, education stakeholders have woken up to revolutionary advice – sometimes quite fitting towards restructuring the sector.
Amidst the reform calls, the issue of lack of funds coupled with how available funds are utilized, has come up hence the need for adoption of digital data collection and maintenance.
The creators of the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC), Sossion said, ignored the tenets of industrialization. The present structures of CBC he insisted “could not promote innovation and industrialization.”
He said that the digital revolution was already “transforming the way children acquired information, communicated, learned and even interacted with their peers.”
Education in Kenya, he insisted must evolve to support teachers in developing students’ potential and prepare learners to become innovative and critical thinkers.
Sossion insisted that educators needed to realize that they were under the obligation to allow technology to support learners in gaining skills and competencies. While students were equipped to think independently, technology and e-creative thinking skills should be used to assist learners be innovative in life.
By Robert Nyagah
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