Evaluation and selection of school textbooks in Kenya: the role of the ministerial textbook vetting committee

Abstract

In pre-independence period and immediately after independence in 1963, textbooks in Kenya were mainly produced by the multinational publishers, and mainly in the United Kingdom where these publishers had their headquarters. This however, changed in 1965 when the government of Kenya established Jomo Kenyatta Foundation (JKF). At that time also, a curriculum centre was established by amalgamation of a number of subject based curriculum centres to form Kenya Institute of Education (KIE). The formation of these two institutions - KIE and JKF was aimed at producing textbooks locally. There is always a need for a mechanism to review and control the quality of learning materials used in classrooms with regard to relevance, content, educational approach and efficacy, as well as to ensure that the provision of learning materials reflects government policies (Askerud, 1997). The government's intention was to use KIE to write and JKF to publish textbooks that are socially and culturally acceptable to the Kenyan people and reflect government policies. The government therefore used KIE to identify teachers, educationists and lecturers in teacher training colleges to write manuscripts. The major aim was to produce books that conform to the curriculum, but are also culturally and socially relevant to the needs of the Kenyan pupils. Although the government established JKF to publish textbooks, it could not produce enough textbooks for all Kenyan schools. Multinational publishers were therefore allowed to publish some textbooks that were developed by KIE and also develop others that conform to the curriculum. The multinationals thus continued to dominate the market even after the establishment of JKF. These multinational publishers that dominated the market from early 1950s to late 1980s included Longman, Oxford University Press (OUP), Heinemann and Macmillan (Rotich, 2000). These publishing firms dominated the industry because they had financial resources to attract well-trained personnel. When Kenya changed her education system in 1985 from 7-4-2-3 (seven years in primary, four years in secondary, two years in high school and at least three years in university) to 8-4-4 (eight years in primary, four years in secondary school and at least four years in university), the two state-owned publishing houses - Kenya Literature Bureau (KLB) and JKF dominated the production and distribution of textbooks for both primary and secondary schools. KLB had been established through an Act of parliament in 1980 to replace East African Literature Bureau (EALB) that stopped its operations after the collapse of East Africa Community. Following this change in education system, the government, through the Ministry of Education Science and Technology (MoEST) started to categorise textbooks into core and supplementary textbooks. The core textbooks were those authored by KIE and published by JKF and KLB while the supplementary readers were those published by other publishing houses – the local and multinational publishing firms. Ironically the government used KIE to evaluate these books yet by extension, it was an author. There was only one core textbook per subject in a class, which all schools in Kenya were expected to use.