KEPSA Education Sector leaders, on 26^th July 2022 engaged with the Ministry of Education on the recovery and transformation of the education sector in the country. The meeting was chaired by the Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) Dr Sarah Ruto and co-chaired by the KEPSA Education Sector Board Vice-Chair Ms Wairimu Njage.

The forum focused on the brief of the Transforming Education Summit (TES) and tools for private sector consultations for Kenya’s Country Position Paper to be presented at TES, which will be held in September 2022 at the UN General Assembly Meeting (UNGA).

Present at the meeting was the KEPSA ICT Sector Board Chair Mr Ben Roberts; KEPSA Education Sector Vice-Chair (TVET) Ms Priscilla Kerebi; Mr Davis Waithaka – Lead Education- ICT –Technical Working Group; Ms Mutheu Kasanga – Immediate past Chair of the Sector Board and Directors from the Ministry of Education.

The UN Secretary-General announced in his report to the UN General Assembly the intention to convene TES in New York in September 2022. The summit will mobilize action, ambition, solidarity, solutions to transform education between now and 2030. Through the Ministry of Education, the Kenyan government committed to attending TES (pre-summit) in Paris in June 2022 and the TES meeting in New York in September 2022. The summit will focus on key components such as:

• Recovery from the COVID -19 educational disruption
• Identifying the main strategic transformations and levers for re-imagining education for the twenty-first century and accelerating progress toward shared education goals
• Strengthening public education financing, and
• Raising the ambition of national education targets and benchmarks.

Key focus areas of the engagement was as follows: 

In her opening remarks, Dr Ruto introduced the objective of the meeting as an engagement to consolidate and solidify the private-public partnership in expressing the voice of Kenya ahead of the UNGA meeting on education. She thanked the private sector for its agility and flexibility in embracing the transformative change of the sector. She called for deeper engagement between the ministry and the private sector in education matters.

Dr. Ruto appreciated the diversified representation of the private sector in education that includes not only trainers and training institutions but that through the KEPSA sectors board, the private sector diversified spectrum will enrich the country’s position paper. The KEPSA education sector board also presented an agile and diversified sectorial approach that includes ICT and other sectors in solidifying the systems approach for education transformation in Kenya. She urged the sector board and the ministry to forge a stronger relationship to strengthen public-private partnerships. Public-private partnerships can also be a thematic area in the position paper.

In her remarks, Ms. Njage expressed the private sector commitment to the part of the process of sharing Kenya’s rich stories of education transformation and contribution. She reiterated the ministry’s full support and partnerships to ensure positive transformation in the Education Sector to make Kenya a regional and global education hub. She also noted the opportunity to transform the labour force’s productivity in Kenya through education, which a report in the local daily showed that it stood at 15%. She urged the TES proposals to be geared toward positioning the CBC curriculum as an avenue to internationalize the Kenyan education system.

In her remarks, Ms Mary Kangethe, Director of Education Programs, reiterated the need to harness brilliant and forward-looking ideas in the education sector from the private sector and consolidate them to the national level through consultations with the different stakeholders. She added that this would help produce Kenya’s position that solidifies the sector recovery post-Covid Pandemic. She further highlighted that the consultations would be centred around five thematic areas:

The Ministry of Education (MoE) will conduct national and county consultations with all education stakeholders, including Civil Society and Counties. The County engagements will take place in six counties of Nairobi, Nakuru, Kwale, Garissa, Turkana and Bungoma.

Dr Rueben Mutegi, the lead consultant, highlighted the thematic focus area of Kenya’s position on the methodology to be used, especially on data collection and analysis. He urged all the stakeholders to participate in giving their views, which he said would be recorded in the bigger report if not in the 2-pager document prepared for the president. The action tracks for the Kenya position paper are;

1. Inclusive, equitable, safe, and healthy schools
2. Learning and skills for life, work, and sustainable development
3. Digital learning and transformation
4. Teachers, teaching, and the teaching profession
5. Governance and Financing of Education

Key Outcomes of the Meeting:

• Ministry in consultation with KEPSA to develop a methodology for collecting private sector views and best practices on the thematic areas.
• KEPSA to mobilize her members to make input and organize consultative sessions to ensure the private sector’s voice is reflected in the country’s position.
• The meeting resolved to include successes and transformative stories of positive change and showcase best practice videos.