The Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) has its merits and demerits almost in equal measure. This is because it gives learners an opportunity to proceed to new skills as soon as they show mastery of the skill at hand instead of the conventional way of learners working on the same skill for the same amount of time throughout a lesson or unit which can take a long duration of about one month.
One of the main aspects of CBC is ensuring that there’s a standard scale in which competencies or skills are assessed, this is because it involves a personalized learning approach. Competencies are mainly focused on subject mastery irrespective of other important variables like completion and time.
The CBC takes an objectivist approach to learning. It focuses on the immediate employer needs and demands and is less focused on preparing learners with the flexibility needed. It has an additional complex of having more paperwork and massive secretarial assignments like, lengthy schemes of work and lesson plans, records of work, Teacher learning modules from colleges and Teacher Performance and Appraisal Development (TPAD) which are keyed into the system all the time at the expense of actual teaching and contact time with learners.
Some scholars who took time to analyze the CBC learning style in 1998 described the system as excessively narrow, rigid, atomized, theoretically and empirically lacking in pedagogy which requires a robust and sound approach for it to be successful. They additionally observed that it does not suit subject areas which appear hard.
CBC exposes learners’ competencies and hones them arbitrarily to suit the dynamic world. Some learners appear more exposed in certain disciplines than even teachers themselves, this demands the flexibility of teachers to the level of “Learning to Learn” from colleagues, the internet and other stakeholders, and no teacher should ever imagine that he/she has a monopoly of ideas.
After domiciling Junior Secondary School classes in Primary school,it’s important for the government to have a relook at the qualifications of the headteachers under whom the school is, this is because learning at this level is now more advanced running from Early childhood education to grade 6 then from grade 7 to 9.An administrator at this level should have basic knowledge about most of the subjects and not just meriticulous promotion.
Competency Based Curriculum is far better than the traditional 8-4-4 system because it’s all inclusive since it considers all children by providing parallel and complementary academic, vocational and talent competencies. Learners demonstrate skill before moving ahead.Additionally better decision making abilities, learner centeredness, flexibility, and is the absolute ticket to gain practical and expected real world experience
The government has struggled to make the system succeed, however it’s important to note that at the very beginning of implementation, we shall have many bottlenecks but it’s the role of the government to intensity capacity building,hire more Teachers especially in science and Mathematics, avail adequate teaching and learning materials, provision of enabling infrastructure and reduction of alot of paperwork and many secretarial duties at the expense of teaching, in this way, Competency Based Curriculum will greatly succeed.
Rev Samuel Nyakundi Nyatera
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