Competency-Based Education asks a different question of a teacher than 8-4-4 did. Instead of “what mark did this learner get”, it asks “can this learner do this thing yet”. That sounds like a small change in wording. In practice it changes what you record during the term, what a report card has to say, and how much evidence a class teacher is expected to keep.
This guide walks through what CBE assessment involves from Grade 1 to Grade 12, where the national assessments sit, and how to get reports out at the end of term without three evenings of spreadsheet work.
The structure, briefly
Kenya's education system runs on a 2-6-3-3-3 structure:
- 2 years of pre-primary
- 6 years of primary, Grade 1 to Grade 6
- 3 years of Junior School, Grade 7 to Grade 9
- 3 years of Senior School, Grade 10 to Grade 12
- then tertiary
The first Grade 10 cohort moved into Senior School in January 2026, and existing secondary schools are converting into Senior Schools. If your school is going through that, our guide on the secondary to Senior School transition deals with it directly.
You will also see the curriculum called both CBC and CBE. It is the same reform — the Competency-Based Curriculum is delivered within the broader Competency-Based Education framework. Nothing in your school has to change because of the naming.
Classroom assessment and the four rubric levels
Day-to-day assessment under CBE is competency-based and uses performance levels rather than a single percentage. The four levels are:
| Level | Short form | What it means in plain terms |
|---|---|---|
| Exceeding Expectation | EE | The learner does this confidently and can apply it in new situations |
| Meeting Expectation | ME | The learner does this reliably, as the curriculum expects at this level |
| Approaching Expectation | AE | The learner is getting there but still needs support |
| Below Expectation | BE | The learner is not yet doing this and needs direct intervention |
The practical consequence for a school is that a class teacher is now recording judgements against specific competencies, repeatedly, across a term — not one exam mark at the end of it. Multiply that by the number of learners and strands in your class and you can see why the record-keeping is where CBE either works or quietly falls apart.
Keep the evidence where it can be found
Rubric judgements are only useful if you can show what they were based on. Projects, observations, oral work and practical tasks all count as evidence, and all of it tends to live in a teacher's own book unless the school gives it a home. The schools that cope best decide early — before the term starts — where evidence lives and who is responsible for entering it.
The national assessments: KPSEA and KJSEA
Two KNEC assessments punctuate the journey:
- KPSEA — the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment, sat at Grade 6, at the end of primary.
- KJSEA — the Kenya Junior School Education Assessment, sat at Grade 9. This one feeds Senior School placement, which makes it the assessment parents will ask you about most.
These sit alongside, not instead of, your school-based assessment. A learner's record should show both: the national assessment outcome, and the competency picture your teachers built across the terms.
What a CBE report card has to show
This is where a lot of schools discover their software was built for 8-4-4. A report card that only knows how to print a mark, a mean and a position cannot express a competency judgement, and bolting a letter grade onto a percentage does not fix it.
A workable CBE report card generally needs to carry:
- The learning areas the learner actually takes, at their grade level.
- Performance levels per strand or competency — not one grade for the whole subject.
- Teacher comments that say something specific about what to do next.
- Attendance for the term.
- Space for the parent to see progress across terms, not just this one.
The last point is the one most often missed. Parents judge progress by comparison. If a report shows only the current term, you will spend the following week explaining it on the phone.
Running CBE alongside 8-4-4 and IGCSE
8-4-4 is being phased out, but its final cohorts are still working through secondary school, and plenty of schools also run IGCSE or another international curriculum. For several more years, a single school may need to produce three different kinds of report from one set of learner records.
That is a systems question, not a teaching one. Practically, it means:
- One learner record, several assessment schemes attached to it — not three parallel systems.
- Report formats that differ by cohort, generated from the same place.
- Fee, attendance and communication records that do not care which curriculum a learner is on.
If you are evaluating systems on this basis, the guide to choosing a school management system has a scorecard that covers it, and the CBC/CBE school management page shows how Mzizi handles the mixed case.
Getting reports out without the spreadsheet marathon
The end-of-term crunch is rarely caused by the reports themselves. It is caused by evidence arriving late, in different formats, from different teachers. A workflow that avoids it looks roughly like this:
- Set up once, at the start of the year. Learning areas, strands, rubric levels, exam types and report formats. Doing this in Week 1 saves the whole year.
- Enter as you go. Weekly or per topic, not the week before closing. This is the single biggest difference between schools that struggle and schools that do not.
- Check completeness mid-term. Run a report showing which classes and learning areas have gaps, while there is still time to fill them.
- Generate in bulk. A whole class or grade at once, in your school's format.
- Publish to parents directly. Through the portal, or by SMS and WhatsApp, rather than printing and hoping the envelope gets home.
On the last step, the channel matters. See parent communication across SMS, WhatsApp and the portal for what belongs where.
A term checklist
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| Before the term opens | Confirm learning areas per grade, rubric levels, exam types and report format |
| Week 1 | Class lists final; every teacher knows where entries go |
| Weekly | Teachers record competency judgements as topics are covered |
| Mid-term | Run a completeness check; chase gaps by class and learning area |
| Two weeks before closing | Teacher comments entered; attendance reconciled |
| Closing week | Generate reports in bulk, publish to parents, archive the term |
What goes wrong most often
- Treating CBE as 8-4-4 with new labels. Recording one mark per subject per term and converting it to EE/ME/AE/BE at the end defeats the purpose and produces reports parents cannot act on.
- Leaving entry to the last fortnight. The workload is the same either way, but compressed into two weeks it produces errors and exhausted teachers.
- Different formats per teacher. If two teachers record differently, the reports cannot be generated in bulk, and someone spends a weekend reconciling.
- No mid-term completeness check. Gaps found on closing day cannot be filled.
- Reports that only a teacher can read. If a parent needs it explained, it has not done its job.