- CBE offers Kenya an opportunity to shift learners from a job-seeking mindset toward becoming value creators and problem solvers.
- Learners should embed financial literacy, budgeting, saving and entrepreneurship into everyday subjects such as mathematics, agriculture, ICT and science.
- Parents, teachers and curriculum developers should treat financial discipline and value creation as core elements of CBE, not decorative additions.
By Hillary Muhalya
What if the greatest weakness in Kenya’s education system is not that our children are failing to learn, but that we have taught them to wait? For decades, the formula has been familiar: go to school, pass examinations, obtain certificates, search for a good job and hope for financial security. Parents repeat it, learners embrace it, and society celebrates it. But there is a problem: an economy cannot employ everybody it educates.
This is where Competency-Based Education (CBE) presents Kenya with an opportunity to change the conversation, not simply about what children learn, but about what they can do with what they learn. The debate should no longer be about whether a learner will become an employee or an entrepreneur; it should be about whether education gives that learner the capacity to create value, recognise opportunities, solve problems and build a productive life. That is where teachers become critical. A teacher is not merely a person who delivers content; under a competency-oriented system, the teacher can become a catalyst who helps a learner discover that knowledge, talent and skills can be converted into solutions and, eventually, economic opportunities.
From Job Seeker to Problem Solver
The old question is “what do you want to be when you grow up?” The better CBE question is “what problem do you want to solve?” That single change can transform a child’s outlook. If learners are challenged to identify problems around them and think of practical solutions, they begin to see opportunity where others see difficulty. A farmer’s challenge can become an agricultural innovation, a transport problem can inspire a service, a technological gap can produce a digital solution, and a creative talent can become a product. This is how the wealth-creation mindset begins.
Teaching Children the Value of Money
But it must begin with an understanding of money. Children should learn early that money is earned, that it comes from work, skills, knowledge, enterprise, investment and the creation of something useful. The alternative is a dangerous culture of entitlement in which children grow up believing that whenever they want something, somebody should provide the money. The classroom can challenge that mentality by teaching learners that income follows value, and that the more useful a skill, service, product or solution becomes, the greater its potential economic value. This does not mean turning children into money-making machines; it means giving them a realistic understanding of how economies work.
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They must also learn the difference between needs and wants, an increasingly important lesson in an age of social media, where children are exposed daily to lifestyles they may not understand or afford. A child who learns to say, “I want it, but I do not need it,” has learned something far more valuable than the ability to consume; they have learned self-control, which is a foundation of wealth. The same applies to saving. One mindset says spend what you have, while the other says keep something for tomorrow. Children should be encouraged to understand budgeting, saving and delayed gratification through practical, age-appropriate activities, and as they grow older, they can learn about investment, compound growth, risk and long-term financial planning. The crucial message is that money has two possible destinations: it can disappear through consumption, or it can be used to build future capacity.
CBE can bring these lessons to life across different learning areas. Mathematics can move beyond abstract calculations to budgeting, pricing, profit and loss. Agriculture can demonstrate commercial farming, value addition and agribusiness. ICT can expose learners to digital skills and technological innovation. Science can encourage invention and practical problem-solving, while creative activities can help learners discover talents that may eventually become productive skills. This is where CBE’s competencies become more than educational terminology: creativity teaches learners to imagine possibilities, critical thinking teaches them to question assumptions, communication enables them to sell ideas and work with others, collaboration teaches them that major solutions are often built collectively, and problem-solving teaches them to confront challenges rather than run away from them. These are not merely classroom competencies; they are economic competencies.
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Wealth Creation Is Not a Competition
Yet Kenya must also teach children another important lesson: wealth is not a competition. A learner should not measure success by what another child owns, since someone can drive an expensive car and still be heavily indebted, wear designer clothes and have no savings, or appear rich without possessing genuine financial security. Looking wealthy and being wealthy are not the same thing. CBE should therefore help learners develop a culture of financial responsibility rather than lifestyle competition. Schools should also expose learners to people who have created value in different ways, including entrepreneurs, farmers, artisans, innovators, professionals and technology developers, whose stories can demonstrate that there is no single road to economic success.
There must, however, be a clear line between wealth creation and the pursuit of quick money. Young people should be taught that fraud is not entrepreneurship, corruption is not investment, and exploitation is not innovation. Sustainable wealth takes time; it is built through skills, discipline, saving, responsible investment, patience, integrity and continuous learning. This is where parents and teachers must work together. Parents should not only ask children about examination marks but also talk to them about saving, spending, work, responsibility and the value of skills, while teachers should be given the freedom and support to connect learning with real-life economic challenges. The Ministry of Education and curriculum developers should ensure that financial literacy, entrepreneurship, innovation and value creation are not treated as decorative additions to CBE, but as meaningful elements of preparing learners for life beyond school.
Not every learner will become an entrepreneur. Kenya will always need teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, farmers and other professionals. But every learner can become a value creator: a doctor can create a better health service, a teacher can develop an innovative education solution, an engineer can design a useful product, a farmer can add value to agricultural produce, and a technology graduate can develop an application that solves a local problem. The issue, therefore, is not whether everyone should own a business, but whether education teaches people to see themselves only as consumers and job seekers, or also as creators, innovators and contributors. That is the choice before CBE.
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The job seeker asks, “Who will employ me?” The wealth creator asks, “What can I create?” The consumer asks, “What can I buy?” The financially disciplined learner asks, “What can I build?” The follower asks, “What do others have?” The confident learner asks, “What can I develop?” And the passive graduate waits for an opportunity, while the CBE graduate should be equipped to recognise one, create one and, ultimately, create opportunities for others.
Kenya does not simply need an educated generation. It needs a generation capable of turning knowledge into skills, skills into value, value into opportunity and opportunity into sustainable wealth. If CBE can help teachers plant that mindset while children are still in school, it will have achieved something far greater than preparing learners for examinations. It will have helped prepare them to build their own future.
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