Court drops Prof George Magoha from a case challenging the implementation of the CBC
The High Court has excluded former Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha from a lawsuit challenging the execution of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC). In directives issued on Wednesday, the court scheduled the case for a hearing on February 15.
A petition filed in September 2021 by the then President of the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), Nelson Havi, had included the late Cabinet Secretary, who passed away in January 2023, as a respondent. The urgent application sought interim orders to halt the ongoing implementation of CBC, which Magoha was leading at that time.
Havi and Esther Ang’awa, the primary petitioner, had requested the court to refer the case to the Chief Justice to form a panel of at least five judges.
“The necessity to have a bench of not less than five to hear the matter is informed by the various serious questions raised in the petition including whether the Minister in charge of Education can alter the system of education through sessional papers and policy decisions instead of legislation,” Havi told Capital FM at the time.
“A reading of the Basic Education Act indicates that the system of education is codified in law and its only Parliament that can change that system of education,” Havi explained.
Havi contended that the transformation of the education system had led to changes in the fundamental structure of the country’s educational framework without the required modifications to the Basic Education Act.
“The effect of this overhaul and replacement of the system and structure of basic education is to designate a primary school as a secondary school and obfuscate the dichotomy between these two components of the basic education structure necessary for transition from primary education to secondary education,” Havi stated.
Ang’awa, who also submitted an affidavit supporting the petition, argued that the introduction of the new curriculum, primarily based on the Basic Educational Curriculum Framework of 2017 and Sessional Paper 1 of 2019 on curriculum reform, amounted to a violation of the Basic Education Act and the Constitution.
The petitioner asserted that the actions taken by Prof Magoha, the Kenya Institute for Curriculum Development (KICD), the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), and the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) were illegal and harmful to students. She contended that the CBC framework violated rights guaranteed under Chapter 4 of the Constitution, specifically protected in Articles 19, 21, 24, 29, 33, 42, 43, 47, 53, 55, 69, and 70.
Ang’awa specifically highlighted the right to free and compulsory education as outlined in Article 53, emphasizing that the Ministry of Education had neglected this crucial aspect in the implementation of CBC.
The petition set the stage for a significant legal confrontation after Magoha affirmed that the “CBC train [had] left the station.”
