Mary M. Waiganjo & Maina W. Mwangi 

Abstract  

Life skills have been described as a large group of psychosocial and interpersonal skills which can help young people face the realities of everyday life. This is important given the dynamism of the contemporary world with its complex challenges that the young people have to deal with. Life skills enable young people to be responsible citizens who contribute positively to society. This is essential in Kenya given the many emerging social problems in the society and the fact that the employers desire employees that have technical as well as life skills. Life skills education (LSE) refers to education interventions that seek to inculcate the necessary psychosocial and interpersonal skills in students as they go through the school curriculum. Kenya has embraced LSE in the proposed curriculum but for it to succeed; the government needs to re-tool the teachers with appropriate teaching approaches, empower the schools with the requisite materials, and re-align the teacher training programmes with the proposed school curriculum. This is a theoretical paper aimed at making an appeal to the stakeholders in education to take LSE with the seriousness it deserves given the long-term implications of life skills.   

 Key words: Life skills, Life skills education, Education for sustainable development