Equipping the next generation with skills

Under the social pillar of Kenya’s Vision 2030, the critical importance of providing high-quality education and training is clearly signalled.

The new Sustainable Development Goals – in particular SDG4 - highlights the importance of providing high quality, relevant education for all. To achieve this, the Kenyan government has embarked on various new initiatives. This week, education experts are meeting in Nairobi to share their ideas on how the country can best reform its education system.

At the recent Education World Forum conference in London in January 2016, which brought together more than 80 ministers of education, Kenya’s Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’I and CEO of KICD, Julius Jwan shared the key drivers for education reform in Kenya stressing the critical importance of technology in education.

The British Council has been working closely with the Ministry of Education and particularly the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) as it embarks on this process of curricula reform.

In the spirit of fostering friendly knowledge and understanding between Kenya and the UK, the British Council brought to Kenya, Peter Hall Jones, the founder of the Curriculum Foundation, an organization working around the world and in the UK, helping schools develop a world class curriculum and pedagogy. Mr Jones teamed with senior officers from KICD working on Kenya’s national curriculum reform project.

More than 50 per cent of Kenya’s population is under the age of 18, and perhaps rightly so, President Uhuru Kenyatta acknowledges this when he remarked that the country’s Vision 2030 will be powered by ‘young energy and young thinking’.

It is Kenya’s next generation who will be at the centre of innovations that propel Kenya forward, contributing to the EAC and Africa’s rapid economic growth. Critical to all of this will be the role of education and school systems in preparing and equipping young people .

As educators, it is our responsibility to prepare every young person for their future in the best possible way. Qualifications and the mastery of subject knowledge, be it in the arts, sciences or humanities, remain important, but are no longer enough on their own to secure a successful future.

Rather, young people need and deserve the opportunity to grow into well-rounded, creative and critical citizens, ready to engage with labour markets and shape the future for themselves, their societies and future generations. This requires a renewed focus on pedagogies that stimulate creativity and critical thinking, that nurture problem-solving skills, enhance collaboration and communication skills, develop intercultural fluency and equip young people with high order digital literacy skills.

The British Council’s work in schools, delivered through its global network of offices in over 100 countries, is trying to address these issues in three main ways: by contributing to global education debates, through technical assistance to support system reform, and lastly, through the provision of professional development opportunities for teachers and school leaders.

In June 2015, the British Council and the UK’s Department for International Development made a £34 million commitment towards enhancing the capacity of developing countries’ education systems. Under a third phase of the Connecting Classrooms programme we will work with more than 4,000 schools and over 120,000 teachers with the ultimate goal of improving learning outcomes for more than 5 million learners across Sub Saharan Africa.

In Kenya, we continue to work closely with the Ministry of Education and other partners in the implementation of Connecting Classrooms. We are also working with the Teachers Service Commission.

The British Council believes that developing young people’s core skills will enable them to engage critically with the world around them. In Kenya, we will initially be offering professional development programmes for teachers and school leaders in three areas: creativity and imagination, critical thinking, problem solving and promoting digital literacy.

For younger learners in primary schools, we are excited to be introducing World Voice; a global arts and education programme which supports young people to develop creatively and contributes to wider learning through song.

Research shows that when music is used in a learning environment, it positively impacts other aspects of a child’s intellectual development. World Voice aims to ensure that through training, collaboration and the availability of online resources, young people have the opportunity to use singing to develop their musicality and support wider learning.

Equipping Kenya’s next generation with skills and competencies for the 21st Century will keep Kenya and Africa on the move and on the rise.