KICD, UAP inks Sh21mn deal to create financial courses for teachers

NAIVASHA, Kenya Nov 10 – The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) Wednesday signed a Sh 21 million deal with UAP Old Mutual Group to develop financial literacy guidelines for junior and senior secondary school teachers under the new Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC).

KICD says it undertook the project in order to impart learners with core life skills after identifying gaps in the existing financial literacy matrices in the learning curriculum which is currently in the early phases of implementation.

UAP Old Mutual Group, which will finance the initiative noted that financial literacy is essential for every citizen in the country, and it would be achieved through the training of teachers.

“We firmly believe that teachers also need to understand their financial well-being to teach financial concepts well.  Old Mutual will offer financial wellbeing training to participating teachers as part of the pilot alongside this critical financial literacy training program,” added Jerim Otieno, Managing Director UAP Old Mutual.

KICD CEO, Charles Ong’ondo, commented that the guidelines development was essential in developing the educational sector in the country.

“As you are aware, we are in the process of reforming our curriculum, and one of the critical aspects of this partnership is to develop learner competency to have learners who can think, create and do. We intend to achieve this by integrating financial literacy in all learning areas, and to values hence molding an ethical and skilled society,” Ong’ondo said.

He added that there posed a challenge of lack of technological and content knowledge skills among most teachers and therefore they were not able to train learners on money-saving and budgeting.

“The focus on teachers is a deliberate mainstreaming strategy to address the systemic challenge of the lack of technological, pedagogical, content knowledge among most teachers and trainers in the formal and non-formal education and training systems,” he said

Upon its development, the guidelines would be available on the Kenya Education Cloud and KICD multimedia elements for access to all.