Education stakeholders in Kilifi County are now calling for speedy reforms in the sector after statistics revealed that the county has the highest number of overage students.
In a dialogue meeting to discuss the implementation of the new Competent Based Curriculum (CBC) on Wednesday, it was revealed that 85% of the students set to sit for final exams in 2019 are overage.
The situation is so dire that in some cases, the county has recorded students aged 20 years who are set to sit for their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education .
The research was done by Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development KICD, Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) and other education bodies.
Addressing journalists shortly after the dialogue forum, Kilifi County education CEC, Professor Gabriel Katana said the implementation of the CBC will not help address poor performance in Kilifi county when majority of the students are overage.
“Let us come up and address this issue and see how the new curriculum based education can help improve the levels of performance in our county,” he said.
On his part, the Kilifi County Commissioner Magu Mutundika said the problem of teenage pregnancies in the county was a major contributor.
Last year the county was put on the spotlight after recording 17,000 with Kiloli primary school in Matsangoni recording 26 pregnancies.
During the dialogue meeting, teachers challenged the CBC taskforce representatives to give a timeline on when the new Curriculum officially be ushered in.
