​I was in the last year of the education system before 8-4-4. I attended a church primary school, where we still had erratic home science lessons, even though the subject was not examinable. I learned to weave grass and to knit small scarves using thorns as our needles.

​It was in school that I learned how to polish shoes. One day, our teacher told us to bring shoes from home, and the next day we were taught how to wipe the shoes, put polish with one brush and shine the shoes with another brush. 

​When I was in Standard 5 or 6, our primary school was building new classrooms, and we were told that the new classrooms were for Standard 8 and 9. It is only when we left the Standard 6’s who were not going to do exams the following year, that I first became aware of 8-4-4.

Once upon a time, there was a couple, Wazazi Wakenya, who had been saving their earnings to build a home and finally move out of their poorly built rental apartment. They approached an old friend, a building contractor for help. After all, they knew he would tell them the process from when they contract the architect all the way to when the fundis build the house.

The contractor, however, forgot their lifetime of friendship and got greedy. So he said to them; “give me the money, I can design the house, do the quantity survey and engineering, the contracting and hiring of the fundis.”

​Wazazi Wakenya asked: “are you sure? Don’t we need to get the architect, and quantity surveyor, and an engineer as part of the team?”

This week, the Nation Media Group held another installment of its Leadership Dialogues, this time focused on the new system of education being launched next year. In the opening minutes of the event clearly designed to build up legitimacy for the new system, anchor Smriti Vidyarthi referenced  the common narrative of Kenya’s dysfunctional education system in her first question to KICD CEO Dr Julius Jwan. 

“The competency-based system aims to address the weaknesses of the 8-4-4 system.” She stated. And then she asked: “Dr. Jwan, what is the CBC aim to achieve?”

Dr. Jwan replied: “Maybe I would just try to modify that [question] a bit. In working on a curriculum reform, you don’t necessarily start from the weaknesses. It just happens that a time comes when the society has moved on, and the education system has to move on.”