The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) could lose its powers with a new National Assembly Committee (NAC) proposal seeking to assign regulatory responsibilities to another body.
The National Assembly could review TSC’S mandate and curl the Commission’s regulatory powers.
The National Assembly Committee on Education is set to discuss the separation of TSC’s responsibilities so that it retains its role as an employer and another body to work as a regulator. However, the regulatory body has not yet been decided on.
A regulator could be tasked with setting standards for activities and enforce the requirements for those already in the profession and those joining it.
This could potentially please the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) who have held a long-standing dispute until the current KNUT Secretary-General Collins Oyuu replaced Wilson Sossion in the role. The current KNUT administration has since shifted the union’s stand with Collins Oyuu publicly supporting TSC’s TPD plan which most teachers have not agreed with. In the TPD modules, teachers will have to do away with Sh. 6,000 yearly stipend for the training.
Sossion had stressed over many media briefings over the importance of having a regulatory body in place to do away with the persistent conflicts with TSC that he experienced at the time.
However, not everybody supports the move, with many a critic arguing that stripping TSC of its powers will be in contradiction to Article 237 of the Kenyan constitution.
If these changes go through, the teaching profession will be similar to the medical profession where the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists, and Dentists Union is a regulator while on the other hand, the counties do the employer role.
The National Assembly Committee on Education’s Chairperson, Florence Mutua who also serves as the Women Representative for Busia revealed that the deliberation on stripping TSC of its powers will take place in a two-week retreat.