Competency-based curriculum (CBC) is a newly introduced education system that was hoped to take over the 8 4 4 system. The main purpose of this system of education is to inculcate the values and skills to the learner rather than rote learning as it used to be.
Initially, students used to learn for the sake of exams but not to apply the learned ideas in real-life situations. Mostly the methods used were cramming and memorizing.
CBC system of education was designed and developed by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and later launched by the Ministry of Education in 2017 to help overcome the challenges 8 4 4 system of education.
The learning levels include;
- Senior School (grades 10, 11, and 12)
- Lower secondary (grades 7, 8, and 9)
- Upper Primary (grade 4, 5, and 6)
- Lower Primary (grades 1, 2, and 3)
- Pre Primary (PP2 and PP1)
CBC has 7 core competencies that the creators visualize that every learner should achieve before coming to the end of any education scope. These include;
- Communication and collaboration.
- Learning to learn.
- Citizenship.
- Imagination and creativity.
- Self-efficacy
- Problem-solving ability.
Furthermore, this system has come with a lot of changes from the initial system of education. For instance, learning levels are no longer classes but grades, ECDE has only two levels; PP1 and PP2, subjects are also now known as learning areas but not subjects anymore, topics are called strands, and subtopics are called sub-strands.