TSC: More Than 110,000 High School Teachers to Upgrade
More than 110,000 secondary school teachers are set to undergo retraining in order to be ready for the necessary changes the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) will bring about.
According to the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), there are new learning areas that the CBC has introduced that make it mandatory for all teachers to go back to school and gain the required skills on how to tackle the subject adjustments.
There is a looming double intake come the year 2023 that has necessitated the preparations.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC), in a letter, informed the Principal Secretary for Education, Dr. Julius Juan, that there are some new subjects that will need teachers to undergo training and then be hired.
Among the subjects that will need special attention are pre-technical and pre-vocational education, life skills, health education, and agriculture.
Those that will be optional are the Kenya sign language, Visual Arts, and performing arts.
According to the TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia, all home science and biology teachers will have to undergo training in order for them to handle health education. For social studies, they will undergo training on how to teach content on citizenship while in sports and physical education the teachers have to be able to deal with health and sports.
In the Commission’s view, an overhaul of the teacher education curriculum is needed to meet the special requirements of the CBC.
“We are advising and recommending that the teacher education curriculum should be made flexible and aligned to enable a single teacher a variety of subjects,” said the TSC CEO in a letter dated the 26th of July, which was meant to be an official advisory on the teacher preparation and requirements of junior and senior secondary schools in less than two years.
At the moment, teachers undergo training to teach only two subjects but the demands of the CBC make it a requirement to add teaching areas.
Mandarin, sports teachers, performing arts, and visual and applied arts are also going to be a part of the new exciting Curriculum.
Dr. Nancy Macharia said that teachers in various subjects who will have adjusted or adopted new learning areas will undergo retraining across the country. This includes teachers for the following subjects.
- German;
- Agriculture;
- History;
- CRE;
- French;
- Arabic;
- Kenya Sign Language;
- Building and Construction;
- Kiswahili;
- English and Literature;
- Physical Sciences;
- Mathematics and
- Business Studies.
Concerning funds for the training of teachers, the Commission has revealed that they will be made available for the effective implementation of the junior and senior curriculum.
The institutions that have been chosen for training and retooling of teachers are the Diploma Colleges of Kibabii, Kagumo, and Lugari which will be ordered to admit learners for the new subjects.
The process of training and retooling will be done on a demand-driven approach.
The Kenya Technical Training College is also likely to be instructed to upscale the training of teachers in the subjects that are technically oriented as required in the CBC.
“Universities should be appropriately informed about the new subjects and that should guide admission of students who wish to pursue education to meet the projected demands,” said the Commission.
At the moment, almost all primary school teachers have undergone training as they are currently teaching the new Competency-Based Curriculum.
In June, the Treasury CS Ukur Yatani revealed that the CBC had been allocated Sh. 1 billion to help in the implementation of the CBC while the allocation to TSC was reduced by Sh. 18.7 Billion.
TSC had asked to be allocated Sh. 300 Billion to help in hiring more teachers in order to manage the increased population of students that the 100 percent transition from primary to secondary schools brought about.
The reduced allocation to TSC means that TSC will not be able to recruit the 25,000 teachers and 12,000 interns in the current financial years as schools are struggling with shortages of over 100,000 teachers across all levels of basic education.
As per the CBC, learners in Grade who are pioneers in the new 2-6-3-3-3 curriculum are set to sir for their examinations next year and then join junior secondary schools in 2023.
There is a looming problem of accommodating the 2.6 million children who will be joining the secondary school in Form One which will pose a huge infrastructure problem.
As revealed in a Government report on the CBC, around 1,250,649 learners who joined Grade 4 in 2020 shall transit Junior Secondary school (Grade 7) as the first group of the CBC while 1,320,395 who are in class six will also join Form One in the outgoing 8-4-4 system in 2023.
The CBC focuses on individual talents and developing competencies and career pathways as they transit from primary schools to tertiary institutions.
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