Interrogating Individual Learner Development in Kenya’s 8-4-4 Education Policy

Abstract

The 8-4-4 education policy marks the most singular attempt at a substantial reform of Kenya’s education landscape since the independence policy. Its distinctive character is the attempt to move from “the manpower model and the social demand model to a new method that will deal with the challenges of the system at that time and hence reform the system of education to ‘self-reliance’” (Korir, 2016). The previous (independence) education policy framework generally produced learners who were more fixated about “the labour market, in terms of the attitude towards work, new skills and new expertise” (Korir, 2016). Thus, most of its graduates, soon became unemployable, not only due to the shrinking opportunities (Ojiambo, 2009), but also due to their fixated attitudes and job training. It would appear that such learners had not successfully been educated to the full realization of a sense of intrinsic individual worth and development. Moreover, the challenges of the independent education system served to indicate the limitations of the human capital theory in linking education to the national economic development and securing the place of the individual development of the learner. The 8-4-4 education policy was therefore contemplated to fill both the individual and socio-political gap between the outcome of Ominde’s and Gachathi’s quantitative policy framework on one hand, and on the other hand, the country’s inability to absorb the graduates.