When Kenya’s Competency-Based Education (CBE) was introduced, it was heralded as the Moses that would lead our children out of the wilderness of rote learning into the promised land of skills, creativity, and holistic growth. But like the Israelites who longed for onions and garlic in Egypt, our teachers, parents, and even learners keep glancing
backwards at 8-4-4, shackled by habits that refuse to die. What was supposed to be a revolution now risks becoming a reincarnation.
The enemy is not the 8-4-4 system itself; it is the 8-4-4 mentality. It is the spirit of cramming, the worship of examinations and the obsession with grades. It is the teacher who measures success by how many pages are ‘covered’ instead of how many minds are uncovered. It is the parent who still asks, ‘Mtoto wako alipata ngapi?’ instead of ‘What can your child actually do?’ It is the learner who believes memorising notes is safer than thinking for themselves. This mentality, like rust, is eating into the fresh iron beams of CBE.
The Exam Fetish
The 8-4-4 mentality created an altar where exams were worshipped as gods and children were treated as sacrificial lambs. Under CBE, the shift was meant to be from testing memory to nurturing mastery, but the old ghost still whispers. Teachers craft ‘competency-based’ assessments that suspiciously look like mini KCPEs. Parents press tutors to drill their children for ‘CBC exams,’ a phrase that itself betrays a misunderstanding of the new order. We are dressing the new baby in old clothes, and it is choking.
The Teacher as Taskmaster, Not Facilitator
CBE envisioned teachers as facilitators; gardeners who water curiosity and prune critical thinking. However, the 8-4-4 mentality often still has many teachers standing as military commanders: chalk in hand, notes on the board, dictation flowing. A competency-based classroom should echo with dialogue, discovery and doing. Instead, many echo with monologues. Teachers are still enslaved to ‘syllabus coverage’ instead of learner-centred empowerment.
Parents Still Counting Grades, Not Growth
The 8-4-4 parent wants trophies, not competencies. They want a ‘number one’ child, not a resourceful one. Instead of applauding a child’s ability to cook, code, or compose music, they dismiss such efforts as ‘co-curricular.’ This retrogressive mindset has reduced many homes into private examination councils, where children are measured not by their creativity but by their compliance.
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Learners in the Cage of Fear
Learners, too, remain captives. Having been socialised to believe that success equals marks, they tremble when confronted with open-ended tasks. CBE asks them to explore, innovate and experiment, but the fear of ‘getting it wrong’ keeps them clinging to memorised answers. The soil of their imagination is there, but the ghost of 8-4-4 has poisoned its fertility.
Breaking the Chains
To liberate CBE from this ghost, we must first name the demon: the 8-4-4 mentality. Then we must exorcise it ruthlessly. Teachers must unlearn before they relearn. Parents must be educated and know how to appreciate competencies over grades. Learners must be allowed to fail, stumble and try again, because that is the true cradle of innovation. Policy makers must stop copying the shell of 8-4-4 and start embodying the spirit of CBE.
Kenya abolished the 8-4-4 system but failed to exorcise its ghost. The exam-centred mentality still haunts classrooms, parents, and learners, threatening to suffocate Competency-Based Education. Unless we unlearn the old habits of cramming and grade obsession, CBE will remain 8-4-4, wearing a new uniform.
Kenya stands at a crossroads: either Competency Based Education becomes the dawn of a new intellectual era, or it will be the 8-4-4 system wearing a new mask. The tragedy of our time would be to bury a system but keep alive its mentality. For if the mind remains unchanged, then education, no matter its name, remains a prison.
By Raphael Ng’ang’a
Ng’ang’a teaches at Westlands sub-county.
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