The fate of thousands of students now hangs in the balance after the proposed education reforms were halted by parliament. The reforms which had among other things proposed the lowering of the minimum entry grades for ECDE and Diploma in education primary option to C plain have been put on hold after Parliament ruled them out stating clearly that the Ministry does not have the mandate to come up with laws.
This comes after the Teachers Service Commission petitioned Parliament to put a stop to the proposals some of which were already being implemented. TSC in their petition raised a number of pertinent issues including the fact that the Ministry would be taking away the mandate to set entry requirements for the teaching profession. The taskforce had in its submissions proposed among other areas a reduction of the learning areas under the CBC from fourteen to nine.
Of concern was also the grading system which had proposed that two and not five of the compulsory subjects be used to generate the final grade. The funding model for the University students which was already being implemented was also on the table with the legislators raising concerns on its discriminative nature against the students.
