Kenyan teachers are not ready for new curriculum

Prof Esther Koi Tirima was the Vice Chancellor of Cavendish University Uganda before she accepted the position of regional director position for GEMS Africa Institutes of Teacher Training in East Africa. With a Doctorate in Education from the University of Idaho and more than 20 years experience in higher education, Prof Tirima is an expert in curricula development and assessment and accreditation of higher education institutions. She speaks to Hashtag on the challenges and successes of the new curriculum and the striking difference between Kenya’s higher education sector and that of Uganda.

Who is Prof Esther Koi Tirima?

I call myself the best teacher on my worst day and the worst accountant on my best day. I have always relished being a teacher. What drives me is a passion to establish and enhance systems to provide quality teaching and learning experience for all. I am a mother of two amazing children: Gitari and Makena.

What should people know about GEMS Africa Institutes of Teacher Training in Africa?

GEMS (Global Education Management Systems) is a company that was set up more than 50 years ago by a family in Dubai that opened schools to offer high standard educational opportunities to children. GEMS has since become the biggest educational organisation globally with schools on all the continents. The GEMS school in Kenya is only five years old. Gems Africa Institute of Teacher Training in Africa was established here earlier this year to train GEMS teachers to offer quality education to their children.

Who are your students?

Here, we offer both in-service and pre-service training to our own teachers as well as those teaching the local curriculum and are looking to teach at international schools. At in-service level, our students are teachers already teaching at GEMS schools who are exposed to regular training in a bid to make them as good as any teacher in the world. We also identify great talent among our teachers and train them to become great leaders. At the moment, we are in talks with the ministry of education to be accredited to train brilliant students direct from high school.

What has been your experience so far?

When I came here, I stepped into something that was a start-up and new in the region. The challenge is maintaining global standards and at the same time contextualising them into, say, a Kenyan population. HR policies in Kenya, for instance, are different from those in Uganda and Dubai. Even then, I have always fallen back to the experience I have gathered in the education sector to solve some of the challenges.

How is GEMS different from other teacher training institutions in the region?

The biggest plus for us is that our mother organisation has been around for decades. We, therefore, enjoy the global expertise from our sister training institute in Dubai with whom we compare notes. Unlike other teacher training institutes that are localised, here we have a wide network of teacher training institutes across the globe where we maintain global standards.

From your experience at Cavendish University, how do Kenyan universities compare to those in Uganda?

They are really much the same. Public universities in Uganda go through similar problems we see here including lecturers’ strikes, overcrowding, student unrest, cheating in examinations and such challenges. The only difference I observed is in the private sector. You realise that Kenyan private universities are almost ten years older than those in Uganda. Our private universities are more mature and are doing better that those in Uganda probably because ours have been around for quite some time. Higher education in Uganda is, however, set to develop immensely because the country significantly increased the funding for agriculture and education. Any government that funds its healthcare, its agricultural system and its education system is a forward thinking government.

Some internationally run schools have been blamed for rapid expansion and are posing a challenge to the regulator where they operate. What do you say about these allegations?

I think the regulator is keeping tabs on all of us to know who is not doing things by the book. And I don’t think there is any problem with rapid expansion in education as this gives students more program options and systems that suit them. While it is vital to regulate the education system, it is ideal if the national education system was dent enough such that no one needed anything other than public school.

With your expertise in curricula development, what are the possible the outcomes of the Kenyan education curriculum set to roll out next year?

The best thing about this curriculum is that it matches the global standards. Unlike the past century education system that focused on knowing things, this is a system that insists on competencies and making information real and relevant. One of the key pillars of the curriculum is parental engagement that forces parents to be directly and more closely involved in the academic progress of their children. It will no longer be just looking at grades on report cards but an interdisciplinary assessment of their children.

Are Kenyan teachers are ready for the curriculum?

In my opinion, no. In fact, the average teacher has not even looked at the curriculum. You wonder what they will be teaching come January. I recently wrote a letter to a top university and asked them whether they had updated their curriculum. Next year’s education graduates will be irrelevant and will have to be trained about the new curriculum. This is a paradigm shift that concerns everyone involved in child education, including parents. A lot happens in a child’s parental life that impacts how they behave in school. Parental engagement will only succeed if teachers are trained on new skills to communicate with parents.

What is your take on the status of research and development in teacher training institutions?

I don’t think institutions are doing enough in terms of research and development. In teacher training institutions, teachers should research widely and document content that has direct impact on what they do. Through action research, teachers can also provide interventions on issues such as parental engagement, development of curriculum and such things. Again, little research out of what is done in tertiary institutions is put out there in the public. And whatever is presented out there finds no audience. People don’t attend public lectures to listen to what researchers have to say. Even then, academics should also do research that makes sense; research that is relevant to regional issues. The government is trying in funding research but there is room for improvement. But then, for research to be funded, there first has to be societal demand that comes from a genuine public interest.

What are some of the challenges that teacher institutions grapple with at the moment?

The biggest challenge is the obvious delay in paradigm shift. For a long time, teachers have taught the same things and no one has challenged them. Again, it is only in Africa where becoming a teacher is the last career path one chooses to pursue. It seems that one becomes a teacher only when they cannot become a lawyer or an engineer. In other places, this is the exact difference. In Finland, for instance, highly qualified people are teachers and are the best paid. Recently in Germany, Supreme Court judges went on strike demanding to be paid as much as teachers. This should be the case everywhere. We should stop thinking that teaching is an afterthought ad hoc profession. Only the brilliant minds should be allowed to teach in our schools and colleges.

What are the near future plans for GEMS Africa Institutes of Teacher Training in Africa?

First on the list is to get registration and accreditation to target high school leavers. We are also in the process of developing short courses and longer courses for competence-based assessments especially in the new curriculum. In line with that, well also train teachers on development of lesson plans that will be relevant to the new curriculum.