Former Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
As she leaves Jogoo House, the seat of Kenya’s Education sector,
to Kencom House, the home of Sports, Ms Amina Mohamed will look back at
a tumultuous year in which she seemed to lurch from one crisis to
another.
Ms Mohamed, who served as
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s first Cabinet Secretary (CS) for Foreign
Affairs, serving from 2013 to 2018, carved out a respectable career in
the world of international organisations such as the World Trade
Organisation, Unep, the International Organisation for Maritime among
others.
ABOUT-TURN
Essentially,
Ms Mohamed is a career ambassador whose diplomatic skills, especially
with regard to conflict resolution, sadly came up short at Jogoo House,
where she replaced the ruthless, assertive and even undiplomatic Fred
Matiang’i. The current Interior CS was mostly credited with ending
cheating in national examinations in a single-minded and decisive
onslaught on cartels who had, in the last decade, made the examinations a
cash cow.
Ms Mohamed sparked outrage
last December when she told a Senate sitting that the 2-6-3-3-3
education curriculum would not be rolled out this year as earlier
planned because the ministry was not ready for it. Her declaration
caused panic and protests from parents, publishers and the curriculum
developers and trainers who had made huge investments in the programme.
The
ensuing groundswell of protests and disbelief among education
stakeholders made the chastened minister to make an about-turn and
announce that the curriculum plans would go as earlier planned.
So, teachers, publishers and the Kenya
Institute of Curriculum Development quickly scrambled to roll out the
curriculum in the lower grades. Significantly, the curriculum
implemented without a National Curriculum Policy framework and the
Sessional Paper on Curriculum Reforms Education and Training is yet to
be approved by Parliament.
Perhaps
because her predecessor at Jogoo House was imperious and decisive,
stoking fear and measured respect from education officials and teachers
who had labelled him the eternal micro-manager aka John Magufuli, Ms
Mohammed struggled to stamp her authority in the education sector.
ENTRY GRADES
Her
decision at the beginning of the year to lower entry qualifications
into Teacher Training Colleges for trainees from marginalised areas,
prompted acrimony from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), which
opposed the move and sought the advice of the Attorney General (AG) Paul
Kihara.
The CS had lowered the entry
grades from C to D+ for certificate courses and from C+ to C- for
diplomas in 17 marginalised counties. An unusually bold TSC, with the
Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers rallying behind it,
insisted that teacher qualifications were its exclusive mandate and that
it would not recognise graduate trainees enrolled with the lower
grades. The AG overruled the minister. The dispute was resolved on
Tuesday when the ministry withdrew the decree.
The
TSC is not the only institution to have differed with the minister
openly. The University of Nairobi last month rejected her attempt to
impose three deputy vice chancellors who it said had not passed the
test. The minister had substituted three of the names recommended by the
council with others who apparently had not fared well in the interview
process. The University Council rejected the names and sought the advice
of the AG. The matter has not been resolved.
TEEN PREGNANCIES
Like
an annoying shadow, controversy followed her almost relentlessly and
she found her hands forever full with crises. Last month, head teachers
rose up in arms against what they called the oversupply of textbooks to
schools, saying they were grappling with thousands of books they did not
need.
However, despite her perceived
weaknesses, Ms Mohamed must be given credit for keeping the momentum on
the war against exams cheating. She also showed her motherly and kind
nature by fighting teenage pregnancies. She said the government is
working on a policy to fight the menace and that a digital application
was in the offing to gather and analyse data on it.
It
is also because of the minister’s enthusiastic attention to the 100 per
cent transition policy from primary to secondary schools, that more
than 90 per cent of last year’s Standard Eight leavers are now in Form
One.
Overall, the public will be
inclined to sympathise with a woman who found herself learning how to
swim in the hostile waters of Jogoo from the deep-end and without a
coach or an amateur golfer in a strange course, without a reliable
caddie.
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