Stepping out

Being at the cutting edge of education is always an exciting place to be – as long as you are the person who is planning the new moves. It’s less fun if you are on the receiving end of any changes, as we are discovering with our new Agriculture College venture.

In Kenya it is every primary school students’ dream to get to High School. The prospect of starting a new, and therefore untested, course like ours is a bit of a worry for some of the students. We have been busy explaining the benefits of our new course to some of the students, (again), and reassuring them that it will lead on to great things.

Starting a new college is a bit like launching a completely new product – you invest a lot in the research and design, plan for as much as possible and hope that the punters will be enthusiastic. So far it’s been hard work with a couple of them but I think we are getting there.

We have been assisted in promoting the college by the Kenyan government. In another of our serendipitous coincidences the national newspaper, (the Daily Nation), published an article today which announced the Kenyan government’s plans for “a major departure from the current [education] system”. The government is proposing a radical shake up of education in Kenya to be implemented from September 2013. The newspaper article goes on to give details of two new types of school that would be introduced if the proposals are accepted:

“Talent schools will offer courses in performing and creative arts such as music, drama and games besides the common courses. Vocational secondary schools will focus on artisan and trade courses in addition to the common academic subjects. Some of the core subjects are citizenship education, entrepreneurship, environmental studies, information technology and languages.”

The timing of the announcement could not have come at a better time for us. Our Agriculture College curriculum puts us at the forefront of educational innovation! Being able to share this fact with the students this morning helped us to head off a potential motivation wobble for some of them and lent an extra shine to our promises of a brighter future.

It remains to be seen how long it will take for educational reform to be achieved in Kenya. The proposals pose some serious funding and planning challenges. I really hope that they happen sooner rather than later. However it pans out we will continue to push forward with our plans for changing the students’ experience of secondary education in our bit of Kenya. Tonight I’m very optimistic that our students are less apprehensive about their prospects and that we will all enjoy working on the cutting edge together.