By Alice Kande
Kenya will be joining the World in marking of International Literacy Day (ILD) celebrations which will be held in Turkana County on Monday, (9th September 2024). The theme of this year’s celebrations is “Promoting multilingual education: Literacy for mutual understanding and peace”, and as the Kenya National Qualifications Authority (KNQA) we proudly associate ourselves with this event as an initiative towards enhancing quality and access to education.
The International Literacy Day celebrations which have taken place since 1967 around the world therefore seeks to remind policy-makers, practitioners, and the public of the critical importance of literacy for creating more literate, just, peaceful, and sustainable society.
Literacy is a fundamental human right for all. It opens the door to the enjoyment of other human rights, greater freedoms, and global citizenship. Literacy is a foundation for people to acquire broader knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, and behavior to foster a culture of lasting peace based on respect for equality and non-discrimination, the rule of law, solidarity, justice, diversity, and tolerance and to build harmonious relations with oneself, other people and the planet.
Kenya currently hosts over 600,000 refugees and asylum seekers majority hailing from Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Sudan and Ethiopia that need to benefit from the RPL policy. The comprehensive RPL system is critical in making such competences visible, thus facilitate smooth transition and integration into the host communities and their countries of origin upon return.
The global approach to literacy has now shifted from the traditional 3Rs of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic to include such multiple literacies as information or computer literacy, social literacy to enable the citizens to live harmoniously together; environmental literacy to promotes awareness on sustainable development as well as economic literacy to facilitate effective participation in socio-economic development activities.
The war against illiteracy must involve all stakeholders and the Kenya Adult Learners Association (KALA) has an important role to play in mobilizing adult learners to participate in the literacy programme.
It is also important to note that Kenya Credit accumulation systems (KCATS) policy that is awaiting government approval will go along in facilitating seamless transitions for learners, spanning diverse programmes, institutions, and qualification levels, emphasizing credit transfers, exemptions, and vertical/horizontal mobility for entry, re-entry, and exit.
In alignment with ongoing initiatives for regional and continental education and training harmonization, supported by UNESCO’s Addis Convention on the recognition of degrees and certificates (2014), the Credit Accumulation and Transfer (CAT) system emerges as an indispensable tool for quantifying, validating and recognizing qualifications to facilitate seamless progression.
The writer is the Director General of the Kenya National Qualifications Authority (KNQA). Email: directorgeneral@knqa.go.ke