Follow
Wandia Njoya
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Reviews
  • CV
  • Media
  • Gallery

#CurriculumReformsKE: The fallacy of technical jobs, employment and education reform

28/11/2017

3 Comments

 
PictureSource: ChroncileVitae
The Sidebar conversation on NTV last Wednesday came as a surprise for many. Many did not expect that a debate on education could be emotionally charged and, of course, I came under attack for being emotional. But the conversation was also a surprise for me, because with my conversations about marketization and neoliberalism, I thought that any education expert (which I do not claim to be), would be fairly familiar with global debates on the neoliberal tropes the Government of Kenya is using to justify the curriculum change.
​
Nevertheless, the biggest lesson I learned from the NTV discussion is that the new curriculum was written on the basis of assumptions that the Government thought (or did not know) were not ideologically neutral. Here are some of them:

  1. Kenyans are jobless because they don’t have skills for the available technical jobs
  2. Kenyan children fail in science because they have talents in other subjects (presumably in the arts), or they fail because they are not “academically inclined”
  3. Kenyan education  is a burden and is exam-focused because of a faulty curriculum

In this post, I discuss what is wrong with the first assumption.

FAULTY ASSUMPTION #1: Kenyans are jobless because they don’t have the skills for the available technical jobs

To understand what is wrong with this assumption, one must answer these questions:
  1. would having technical jobs filled resolve the unemployment problem?
  2. are there technical jobs available in the first place?
  3. why do Kenyans not have skills for those jobs?
  4. why are Kenyans not training for skills in technical jobs?

To answer these questions, one must take into account the following:

a) Unemployment is not only about unfilled technical positions

Unemployment is a complex problem that cannot be resolved just by training technicians. We do not even know if the jobs the business sector claims are unfilled exist, how many those jobs are, and what are the pay scales and career progression opportunities in those technical jobs. 

It is also ridiculous, for example, to say that SGR and other infrastructure projects do not employ Kenyan engineers, because our engineers are not qualified, due to poor university training. We do have engineers, and it would be cheaper to fill their training gaps with apprenticeships than to hire Chinese engineers. But even then, the real issue is that funding determines who is employed to build infrastructure. China does not provide funding for infrastructure out of love for Kenya, but out of Chinese interests. If China provides funding, China will employ its own citizens and buy its own materials. It is therefore an insult for African business people to blame African educators for no African engineers building infrastructure. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune. China is paying the piper. We Africans are not calling the tune.

And the reason we are not calling the tune is that we are ruled by governments that are not accountable to the people. Government officials rig elections, siphon public resources with impunity, and when their countries’ technical professionals run to jobs abroad, they celebrate their remittances that the professionals send home. A bad economy is a political and economic problem; it cannot be solved with a curriculum.

b) No data on technical jobs 

We do not have data on the kind of technical jobs that the business sector needs. Instead, the business sector and politicians issue statements blasting Kenyan universities for arts programs, but say nothing about the absorption of technical colleges into universities. If the business sector is really serious, it should release the data on the kind of technical jobs it needs to fill, on how many those positions are, and what are the pay scales for those jobs.

Kenyans are not stupid. If they know the business sector has 100,000 technical jobs, they will train for them, and colleges will offer courses in them. If the business sector and government are really serious about technical positions, let them give us the data and Kenyans will train in those sectors. But rather than fix this problem, the government has opted for a curriculum with pathways that force kids into technical jobs, and with no career prospects.

c) Managerialism and the elevation of CEOs into angelic status

Because neoliberalism says that everything in the world should be run like a business, training in finance and business has become the only qualification to run anything, from hospitals to schools to national parks. Kenyan media, and the Kenyan public, now celebrate CEOs and not innovators, media personalities and not journalists and thinkers, politicians and not professionals. An anchor can become a commentator on politics and global issues using a scanty knowledge of history and economics, just because she did well on TV. An MBA can move through top positions in KWS, Equity Bank and Uchumi, without the public asking whether one can really run wildlife conservation, banking and retail with the very same skills.

In such an environment, there is no incentive for young people to take degrees in anything other than degrees which they think will catapult them to careers in politics, media, diplomacy, banking and non-governmental organizations. Students will shun careers in professional fields, and even more in the science ones. With the new curriculum, the Government is essentially saying that it will transfer problem of professional and technical careers in the adult world to children by forcing children into career pathways based on quotas.

d) Professional prospects in Kenya

Any highly trained professional in Kenya will tell you that working as a professional in Kenya is the most frustrating enterprise. Neoliberalism has managed to convince the world, and restructure the economy in such a way, that true professionals who want to advance in their professions hit a low glass ceiling early in their careers. Professionals are forced to take orders from CEOs who are not professionals in the services their organizations offer. In turn, the CEOs, conscious that they have no knowledge of the profession they run and that their employees know more than them, become more controlling and require more paperwork from employees. The CEO can only make decisions based on money. We therefore see, for example, CEOs measure doctors’ work by the number of surgeries rather than the complexity of surgeries, or measure teachers’ work by the children’s exam results rather than how teachers help students learn and grow into confident individuals.

When this happens in education, education standards necessarily go down, because the teacher is busy trying to meet “targets” for fear of losing their job, and they no longer have the time to focus on students. As the situation deteriorates, the public is told to blame the teachers for not meeting their performance targets and the curriculum for not being up to date. There is no focus on political leadership and how it has destroyed education. That’s what’s happening with the new curriculum.

Meanwhile, celebration of exam results every year will have more and more children saying that when they grow up, they want to become CEOs.

e) Commercialization of university education

In the neoliberal age, universities no longer train graduates for the industry. Universities ARE the industry. Because their job is to make money, not to serve the public good, universities are also following market trends. If Kenyans believe that the only jobs available are in business, NGOs, government and media, Kenyan universities will offer those degrees, regardless whether the country needs those graduates are not. I always say that if more and more young men are forced to hustle by washing cars, eventually a university will offer a BSc in “vehicle sanitation.” And  from the university’s senate to the Commission of University Education, everyone will approve the degree, because the market surveys will show how many men at car washes will be potential students for the degree, and how cars would look better if young car washers know how to polish cars, not just wash cars with soap and water.

As long as the measure of universities is the market and the balance sheet, not the public good, universities will have no incentive to train in expensive degrees that require investment in equipment and faculty. It is in universities’ commercial interests to train students only in social sciences, and that can only be resolved by political and educational leadership that cares about people, not profit. 

​But again, rather than deal with the orientation of university education, the government has chosen to force kids into technical subjects, regardless of the availability of the resources to properly learn those subjects, the students’ interests or the career prospects.


3 Comments
Mwende
30/11/2017 09:03:41 am

A tragic situation, because this analysis will pass clean over so many Kenyans' heads for the very same reasons: zero capacity to stop, think and analyse anything. Buy wow, what an indictment! And instead of the politicians looking for the worth they'll go into defence mode, majorly because they will be stuck where they see political class, and defence mode. Also because our current crop of politicians that should use this to initiate change are barely literate.

Reply
Wilson
7/12/2017 04:57:07 pm

On the part of university being commercialized it's true. After discovery of oil in Turkana there was an upsurge of undergraduates in Petroleum Engineering. What if they all graduate and the Turkanas want only their people to work in Ngamia 1 after years of being marginalized?

Reply
Atanas Mzee
1/3/2018 09:33:43 am

We need to learn from the Dangote group in Nigeria. When they wanted to build a refinery, he sponsored 100 young people to study in India and understand the refinery process. These young people came back and have been involved in the whole process of designing and operation. Dangote is one of the richest Africans. He is using his money to build factories; cement, sugar, dairy, tomato, fertilizer etc not only in Nigeria but across Africa. You can imagine what impact one person can create when they do things with the motive to transform society.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Wandia Njoya

    African. Woman. Wife. Teacher.
    ​

    THANK YOU
    ​for voting for wandianjoya.com as
    ​best
    social issues and active citizenship blog
    2019!



    Categories

    All
    147not Justanumber
    Administration
    Africa
    Arts
    Education
    Faith
    Football
    Health
    Ideas
    Kenya Elections 2017
    Kenya Elections 2022
    Land And Environment
    Leadership
    Love And Revolution
    Music
    Neoliberalism
    Racial To Ethnic Capitalism
    Rwanda
    Speeches
    Youth

    Archives

    March 2025
    February 2025
    October 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    July 2023
    April 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photo from tompagenet