KNUT protests exclusion from education ministry school calendar review team » Capital News

NAIROBI, Kenya May 14 – The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) has asked Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha to include the union in the nine-member committee that was constituted last week to review modalities of having schools re-opened under COVID-19 prevention guidelines.

The union’s Secretary General Wilson Sossion has faulted CS Magoha for disregarding the union’s participation in the team chaired by Dr Sarah Ruto which is expected to review and re-organize the school calendar as part of the post-COVID-19 recovery strategy.   

“The union despite being a principal player in the Basic Education sub-sector, Magoha has continued to maliciously exclude it from major decision-making processes that would define the future of education of this country,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

By not involving the union, Sossion added that Magoha had contravened the international convention, treaties, protocols and agreements as provided for within the International Labor Organization (ILO), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the union’s constitution.

Sossion accused Magoha of continuously exhibiting dictatorial tendencies by overlooking the teachers’ input in affairs that directly concern and affect them.

“Anything without our involvement and participation cannot be for us. Nothing for us without us,” he said.

He further regretted that the implementation of the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) was going on without their input citing the union’s exclusion in the curriculum review taskforce.

“Magoha cannot purport to implement CBC through a taskforce which excludes participation of teachers and includes non-professionals in the education sector,” he said.

The Committee’s Secretariat which is located at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development is expected to submit regular reports to CS Magoha on the implementation progress of COVID-19 related programmes.

The committee will also be required to, “identify institutions that may have been adversely affected by COVID-19 and advise on mitigation and recovery measures.”

Schools closed in mid-March after the confirmation of the first positive coronavirus case.

CS Magoha has been categorical that schools will remain shut until the government is certain that the spread of the virus which has so far infected 737 people in the country is contained.