CBC: The Most Expensive Education Scam Ever Sold to Kenyan Parents

A parent of three children enrolled in the CBC system shared a book-purchase receipt with me, visibly distressed. The figure on that small piece of paper told a far bigger story than the ink suggested. This was not school fees. It was not uniforms, transport, lunch, or boarding costs. It was just books. Basic textbooks. For one term.

In the parents’ WhatsApp group for the same public school, the reaction was unanimous and raw. Complaints flowed uninterrupted. Parents admitted they were overwhelmed. Some confessed they had delayed purchases. Others were borrowing.

A few had simply given up and hoped teachers would “understand.”

What made the conversation even more unsettling was that this was not a private academy or a so-called international school. This was an ordinary public institution serving ordinary Kenyan families.

This is the quiet reality of CBC. It did not arrive with sirens or warnings. It crept in slowly, wrapped in polished language about creativity, competence, and global relevance, while quietly transferring the cost of education from the state to households already suffocating under economic pressure.

The irony that hurts the most is that these books cannot be reused. They are not reference materials meant to last. They are consumables. Children write in them. Tear pages. Submit sections. Finish them and discard them.

Under 8-4-4, books were assets. They moved from older siblings to younger ones. From neighbours to neighbours. From families to communities. They were shared, preserved, and stretched across years.

CBC ended that culture completely. Every grade demands a fresh financial sacrifice. Every academic year resets the burden. There is no continuity. No relief. No memory of the past.

This is where the question becomes unavoidable. Who designed a national education system that deliberately eliminates reuse?

And more importantly, who benefits when reuse disappears?

CBC has created a permanent market. Publishers print endlessly. Approved vendors stock constantly. Printers, distributors, and curriculum contractors thrive. Parents pay without bargaining power. This is not an accident of implementation. It is a feature of design.

When learning materials are intentionally structured to expire, education stops being a public good and becomes a subscription service.

Across Kenya, similar complaints are echoing in homes and schools. Parents choosing between rent and books. Teachers are improvising lessons because learners lack the required materials. Children are being humiliated for not having the “correct” CBC workbook.

Some learners are quietly sidelined. Others are punished indirectly through silence, exclusion, or reduced attention. The system pretends to be learner-centred while structurally punishing learners for their parents’ wallets.

The government’s response has been predictable. Denial. Silence. Or carefully scripted statements about “teething problems” that have now lasted years.

What parents are asking is not radical.

They are asking whether CBC is truly about learning or about economics.

If education is a public good, why does its cost structure exclude the poor by design?

If equity was the objective, why were affordability and reuse not foundational principles?

If the state understands Kenya’s income distribution, why deploy a curriculum that assumes infinite purchasing power?

CBC assumes parents can absorb constant costs. That assumption alone disqualifies it as a public education model in a country where most households live month to month.

Parents have complained. Loudly. Persistently. It has changed nothing.

The idea of returning to 8-4-4 is no longer ideological. It is a practical survival question being whispered in kitchens and shouted in parent forums.

Sustainability is not a theory. It is lived reality. And for many families, CBC is collapsing under its own weight.

What makes the situation worse is how CBC was rolled out. There was no honest cost-impact analysis shared with the public. There was no national conversation about affordability. There was no meaningful opt-out.

Read Also: TSC Announces When They Will Start Retooling JSS Teachers On CBC and CBA

Parents were not consulted. They were instructed.

That alone should worry anyone who believes education policy should be democratic.

Nowhere are the cracks more dangerous than in the transition to senior school and Grade 10. Parents are deeply anxious about admissions, pathways, and criteria that remain unclear even to teachers.

Questions about placement dominate parent discussions. Will Grade 10 admissions be merit-based, school-based, or region-based? How will subject choices affect future careers? What happens to children who cannot access well-resourced senior schools?

There is concern that CBC will perpetuate inequality on a more severe scale. Children from wealthier families will access better-equipped senior schools. Poorer learners will be locked into limited pathways early in life.

Exams under CBC have also become a source of confusion. Continuous assessment has not eliminated pressure. It has multiplied it. Parents are now permanently anxious instead of seasonally stressed.

Assessment tasks require materials, printing, internet access, and parental involvement that many households cannot sustain.

CBC quietly assumes that every home is resourced, connected, and flexible. That assumption is deeply dishonest in a country with stark inequality.

Teachers are also struggling. Many admit privately that training was rushed, uneven, and theoretical. Implementation has been left to improvisation.

This has created a dangerous gap between policy language and classroom reality.

The result is a system that looks progressive on paper but feels punitive in practice.

The most uncomfortable truth is that CBC has shifted the cost of public education onto families while retaining political credit for “reform.”

That is not innovation. That is outsourcing responsibility.

Calling this out is not being anti-education. It is defending education.

A system that bankrupts parents while enriching a narrow ecosystem is not broken. It is functioning exactly as designed.

The solution must start with honesty. CBC cannot continue in its current form.

First, learning materials must be redesigned for reuse. Textbooks should be durable references, not disposable workbooks.

Second, the state must cap and regulate the cost of compulsory learning materials. Education cannot be left to market forces.

Third, admissions and assessment criteria for senior school must be clarified immediately and communicated transparently.

Fourth, public schools must be fully resourced to reduce dependency on parental purchases.

Fifth, parents must be included in genuine national consultations, not token forums.

Most importantly, Kenya must be brave enough to admit mistakes. Education reform is not a religion. It can be corrected.

If CBC cannot be made affordable, reusable, and equitable, then rolling it back or radically restructuring it is not a failure. It is a responsibility.

Education should lift families, not bankrupt them.

Until this truth is acknowledged, CBC will remain what many parents already know it to be: the most expensive policy experiment ever imposed on Kenyan households without consent.

And the final question still hangs unanswered, heavier with every receipt and every WhatsApp complaint.

Who will save Kenyan parents and children from an education system that no longer serves them?

Read Also: How Students Will Be Placed In Senior School As CBC Moves Into Final Phase