State to distribute 9 million Grade Nine textbooks

Makupa Comprehensive School head teacher Nicholas Odhiambo inspects Grade 9 textbooks in Mombasa, on January 1, 2024. [Omondi Onyango, Standard]

The Ministry of Education has procured more than nine million textbooks for Grade 9, Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba has announced.

CS Ogamba noted that 9,926,618 books have been distributed to schools with the exercise expected to be completed by the end of January 2024.

“I have directed the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) to work robustly and ensure that all required textbooks and other instruction materials are available for use by our learners,” he said during the release of the 2024 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination results on January 9, 2025.

This came at a time when parents and bookshop owners complained over the acute shortage of core textbooks for primary and junior secondary schools.

Grade 9 was rolled out in January 2024 with parents and other stakeholders reporting challenges in transitioning from Grade 8 to Nine, the highest level of Junior School.
As part of the reforms, Grade 9 learners will be the first to use updated textbooks aligned with the rationalized curriculum.

Other classes are also set to receive books for the revised learning areas during distribution.

However, KICD acknowledged the challenge of textbooks procured before the reforms for Grade 8 learners, which included content for the now-reduced 14 subjects.

“Those books had already been printed and distributed by the time reforms were finalized, but they remain useful for broad learning,” KICD Chief Executive Charles Ong’ondo said.

Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang said despite challenges the ministry faced in 2024, they were able to deliver a number of targets including distribution of text books.

In a recent interview with The Standard, Prof Ong’ondo said as schools resume in 2025, Grade Nine learners would be the first to receive updated textbooks aligned with the rationalised curriculum following the reduction in the number of subjects.

The government, in 2023, reviewed subjects under the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC), reducing the number of learning areas in lower primary from nine to seven.

In upper primary, the number of learning areas was reduced from the10 to eight, while in junior secondary which includes Grade Nine, subjects were scaled down from 14 to nine.
Ong’ondo said distribution of books will also include Grades 1 to 6.

“The restructuring removed overlaps and reduced learning areas, meaning schools will only need textbooks that align with the core subjects,” Ong’ondo said.

However, the KICD boss admitted that the adjustments, while necessary, had caused temporary confusion in some schools.