The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is currently running a nationwide workshop on the Kenya Primary Education Equity in Learning (KPEEL) programme in Nakuru, getting together education officers from all 47 counties for a pretty in-depth capacity-building training stint that’s aimed at giving them the skills and knowledge they need to get the programme up and running.
The Lowdown on the Workshop
The workshop at ARC Egerton has brought together Sub-County Directors, Curriculum Support Officers, Human Resource bods, Accountants, and County ICT people for a bit of a revamp on how the KPEEL programme is going to be rolled out across the country.
The Official Line
All this follows on from a directive issued by TSC back in April this year in an internal memo that detailed just what was expected in terms of training that was scheduled to take place between May 4 and May 8.
According to the Commission, the five-day exercise is all about making sure everyone has a good handle on what the KPEEL programme’s all about, as well as how to get the reports in and make sure that education initiatives get coordinated properly at the field level. Across all the counties, that is.
Bringing in the School-Based Teacher Support System
During the workshop, participants are also getting trained on how to make the School-Based Teacher Support System (SBTSS) work. This is a key programme that’s designed to make it easier for teachers to get the support they need, strengthen the monitoring framework and generally improve the way the curriculum is delivered in schools all over the country.
The Success Story from Kisauni
During one of the sessions, TSC’s Sub-County Director for Kisauni in Mombasa County, Nicholas Mutungi, shared some really useful insights on how they managed to get the SBTSS programme up and running so successfully with the guys at the workshop.
Kisauni Sub-County really stood out as being one of the high-performing sub-counties in the whole country in terms of getting the SBTSS programme off the ground, and participants have been citing effective coordination and a really robust support structure within schools as some of the key things that made it work.
An Integrated Approach to Education Reform
The fact that they’ve got people from Curriculum Support, ICT, HR and County Accounts at the workshop now shows that TSC’s really going for an integrated approach in terms of rolling out education reforms. They’re talking about bringing in administrative, technical and financial systems all at the same time.
This means that the KPEEL programme is going to be supported by coordinated efforts across all the key functions in the education management system.
What the KPEEL Programme is All About
The KPEEL programme’s part of a wider effort to get education outcomes in primary schools in Kenya to a better level, by making it fairer and giving all kids – irrespective of where they live or what their family’s like – an equal chance to get a good education.
The programme is specifically targeting getting rid of the differences in educational access and quality between urban and rural schools, and making sure that all kids get the same opportunities to learn.
What to Expect from the Programme
Education people attending the workshop reckon that once the training’s finished, programme implementation and service delivery in schools across the country are going to get a lot better.
The training’s designed to give field officers the tools and the know-how they need to actually get the KPEEL programme up and running in their counties and sub-counties, with standardized procedures and coordination mechanisms that they can use to get it done.
TSC’s recognition that you can’t have successful education reform without well-prepared field officers who can actually put policy into practice is really showing through here, with a commitment to making sure that training is comprehensive and gets to the heart of what they need to do to make the system better.
