The government has expanded the application brackets into teacher training college for the Diploma in Primary Teacher Education (DPTE) and Diploma in Early Childhood Development Teacher Education (DECTE) courses from March 7 to April 20.
This is informed by inability to hit the minimum number of applicants. However, it has missed a hit in the game of darts.
In the colonial days, the missionaries and the government employed teachers. The Independent Kenya started off with the 4-4 system — where one qualified to be a teacher after successful eight years of schooling. As the demand for teachers increased, so did the sytem of education change to 7-4-2-3.
DPTE and DECTE are the new designs crafted to replace the now-obsolete Certicate in Primary Teacher Education 1 (P1). The P1, P2 and P3 levels of teacher education date back to newly independent Kenya: It has serves us for more than half a century.
The P1 course was designed to facilitate learning in the 8-4-4 system, which is being replaced by the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC). It is, perhaps, against this backdrop that the DPTE and DECTE were crafted, to align to the new system of education.
The government hopes the new programmes will enable teacher trainees to acquire the required skills, attitudes and competencies to effectively teach and deliver the CBC curriculum.
The entry requirements for admission to the DPTE programme in a mean grade of C-plain in KCSE or its equivalent. Further, teacher trainees Hoping to become primary school teachers need to have scored C-plain in English, Kiswahili, mathematics and one humanity and one science subject.
Under one cluster
Not only do I find this criteria punitive, it also misses in objectivity and violates the basic law of subject clustering and has the possibility of locking out thousands of potential teacher trainees from admission into teacher training colleges.
Instead of separately asking for grade C-plain in English and Kiswahili, the two languages should be grouped under one cluster and the applicants asked to have C-plain in either, not both, of them.
This, without doubt, will enable the Education ministry to meet (or near) the target of expected admissions without compromising quality.
There is the obverse side too. The country has in the upwards of 300,000 qualified but unemployment P1 certificate holders.
With the CBC for Early Years Education 1-3 rolled out, that of upper primary Grade 4 in January last year, and rollout of other upper grades in progress, saying the fate of these teachers hangs by a thread is an understatement.
The government has remained mum about the tutors, only engaging them during job interviews. And even then they are told they do not qualify.
The unemployed P1 teachers should have been prioritised for the DPTE. As such, the entry requirements should read thus: “… possessing a P1 certificate from a recognised teacher training college.”
The author is a banker.