Challenges of the teacher evaluation system under CBC
Pupils at Mboto Sunrise Primary School work on their competency-based curriculum assignment under a tree.
As an effective management concept, performance management (PM) became popular in developing countries a quarter of a century ago. This is a concept in which employees are subjected to targets to be achieved, which would be reviewed periodically to ensure they improve their productivity and, concurrently, reduce losses.
The targets are based on the dictum that “what gets measured gets done”. In Kenya, the climax of the push for PM in the public service was between 2007 and 2013 when annual functions, presided over by the president, to announce the best-performing ministries based on performance contracts of senior public servants with the government became an exciting routine occurrence.
How is this concept applicable to education? Teachers and students have always had performance targets ranging from completion of syllabi on time, testing and grading of examination results through percentages, mean grades, ranking of performances within and between classes as well as ranking of schools against each other. All these activities were measureable hence work got done.
At the onset of PM, one would have thought that educational institutions were to use these existing performance targets to formalise performance contracts among all cadres of staff. As it turned out, PM was applied mainly to employees of the education hierarchy from the minister through the regional and county officials, and rightfully so, since they did not have measurable targets before. A feeble attempt to do so at the basic education institutions was put in place without a provision for the involvement of Boards of Management that legally oversee their performance.
As PM was taking root in the public service, the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) was being introduced in basic education. In this curriculum, students are not ranked according to performance except to classify them as performing below, approaching, meeting or exceeding expectations giving the impression that measurements to gauge performance are being downgraded as much as possible as if the dictum above was a fad or has become untrue or irrelevant yet life after school is very competitive and performance-based.
This scenario raises a number of questions. First, are we certain that teachers are performing as well as they did before CBC was introduced in the absence of measureable targets? Second, what are the accountability measures?
Three, why would institutions that have naturally been performance-based in curriculum implementation abandon PM for a different measurement concept under CBC? Four, what will be the criteria for admission of students to senior secondary schools and later tertiary institutions in the absence of an objective method of ranking their performance? Five, will the classification of honours, pass, distinction and credit in award of degrees and diplomas be abolished in the spirit of abolishing ranking of students’ performance? Six, should acquisition of skills, say, in institutes of technology be time-bound or should students be allowed to continue with their programmes until they acquire the level of competencies required since time has been a variable in learning?
Experts in curriculum development, implementation, evaluation and PM need to work towards reconciling these apparent conflicting management concepts in all levels of the education sector. The PM concept could be the proverbial baby that we may be throwing away with the bathwater at the school level as we embrace CBC.
Mr Sogomo is a former TSC Secretary; [email protected]; @BSogomo
