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CBC Is Here: Is Your School's Software Ready for the Transition?

Kenya's Competency-Based Curriculum represents the most significant change to the country's education system in a generation. For school administrators, it is not just a curriculum change — it is a fundamental rethinking of how student performance is assessed, recorded and reported. Most school management software was not built for CBC. Here is what you need to know.

What Makes CBC Reporting Different

Under the old 8-4-4 system, academic reporting was relatively straightforward: a student sat an exam, received a numerical mark, and was ranked against classmates. Report cards showed marks, grades and positions.

CBC changes this in several important ways:

• Competencies over marks — students are assessed on whether they have demonstrated specific competencies, not just what percentage they scored on a test
• Multiple assessment strands — assessment includes formative (continuous) assessment, summative assessment, and project-based learning — not just end-of-term exams
• Performance levels instead of grades — instead of A, B, C, D, CBC uses Exceeding Expectations (EE), Meeting Expectations (ME), Approaching Expectations (AE), and Below Expectations (BE)
• Learning areas, not subjects — CBC organises content into integrated learning areas that cross traditional subject boundaries
• Narrative comments — CBC report cards require teacher commentary on each student's development, not just numbers

What This Means for Your School Management System

A system built only for 8-4-4 will fail to handle CBC requirements. Specifically, your system needs to support:

• Rubric-based assessment entry (EE/ME/AE/BE rather than numerical marks)
• Multiple assessment strands per learning area
• Formative assessment records — not just end-of-term entries
• CBC-format report card templates that meet MoE requirements
• Ability to run 8-4-4 and CBC simultaneously for schools in transition

The Transition Period Challenge

Kenya's CBC transition is phased. As of 2019, Early Years Education (Pre-Primary 1 to Grade 3) is already on CBC. Upper Primary (Grades 4–6) is transitioning. Junior Secondary School (JSS, Grades 7–9) follows. This means many schools need to run both systems simultaneously for several years.

A system that forces you to choose one curriculum or the other will create serious administrative problems during this period.

Questions to Ask Your Software Provider

• Does your system support CBC rubric-based assessment entry?
• Can you generate MoE-compliant CBC report cards?
• Can the system run CBC and 8-4-4 classes simultaneously?
• How are formative assessments recorded and weighted?
• Has the system been tested with actual MoE CBC assessment frameworks?

Shule Link's CBC Support

Shule Link was updated ahead of the CBC rollout to support both curriculum systems simultaneously. Schools can assign different assessment frameworks to different classes — CBC for lower school, 8-4-4 for upper school — with each class generating the appropriate report card format automatically.