The Kenya Institute of Education has embarked on the final review of the current curriculum.

According to KIE boss Lydia Nzomo, the review findings will determine whether or not the country's education system needs a new curriculum.

Ms Nzomo told the Nation that the current one had been implemented in full cycle, since 2003 upto 2006, with its review covering different classes in both primary and secondary schools.

"The process of summative evaluation has started and KIE is polishing the tools that will be used in gathering relevant data," she said.

The body is expected to present the findings of this review in January 2009, for Kenyans to determine if there is a need for a change in the education system.

A curriculum is the set of courses, course work and content offered in schools.

Ms Nzomo explained that a country's curriculum is dependent on the prevailing political, economic and international occurences.

The review will provide an opportunity to incorporate emerging issues such as conflict resolution and values of nationhood into the school system.

"It is for this reason we have to regularly revise it to ensure that learners go through a relevant and meaningful experience."

The Basic Education ministry has also launched Peace Education, a subject that will be compulsory to all schools at the start of the next term in January.

A team of researchers on education matters have already been tasked with developing questionnaires and other key tools to capture feed back.

"The process will be delayed by the forth coming national examinations but we will make sure that everybody understands the process clearly."

Education experts argue that although the number of subjects have been systematically reduced in the past two decades, the content remains heavy.

Currently, seven subjects are offered in primary schools, but only five are examined in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination.

These are Mathematics, English, Kiswahili, Social Studies and Religious Studies and Science.

Secondary school curriculum offers 27 subjects and a candidate is examined in seven.

The subjects are clustered into five groups. The first group is compulsory and comprises English, Kiswahili and Mathematics.

Besides the compulsory subjects, a candidate is required to take at least two subjects from group two (sciences), at least one in group three (humanities) and one in either group four (technical) or five (foreign languages and business studies).

Heavy curriculum load has been cited as the cause of a recent wave of student unrest with experts in agreement that the current curriculum has deficiencies.

Apart from being faulted for being expensive, thus creating a burden on parents and ultimately contributing to school dropouts, the curriculum is also blamed for courses overlap.

There are also concerns that learning items are not properly structured with certain high-level concepts being taught at lower levels, leading to knowledge-overload.

The review will be the fourth since the introduction of the 8-4-4 system of education in 1985.