The Teachers Service Commission’s selected institutions to offer the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) are still preparing to offer the training to teachers despite an order from Parliament against the training.
Members of Parliament ordered a pause on the TPD until stakeholders have been consulted properly.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has also not given any announcement regarding whether the TPD training should proceed or pause.
Besides, the legislators also called on the government to cover the payment for the training. Teachers are required to pay a stipend of Kshs. 6,000 and the number of institutions offering the course increased.
However, recent action from the four universities that are offering the TPD training shows that the training is indeed set to happen as planned regardless of what parliament demanded.
Advertisements for the programme are ongoing on various platforms.
Among the institutions selected for the programme are Mount Kenya University, Kenyatta University, Riara University and the Kenya Education Management Institute (KEMI).
The National Assembly had a report tabled on March 3 in the House in which the National Assembly’s Education Committee called for a pause on the TPD until all stakeholders have been consulted.
The criteria that the Commission used to arrive at the Kshs. 6,000 TPD fee was also called into question with the Commission urged to make public how they decided on the fee.
Besides, the legislators called for the integration of the TPD with the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) training to avoid wastage of resources and time.
The MPs recommended the Ministry of Education oversee the implementation of the TPD Programme for teachers in public institutions instead of TSC.
In the Committee’s view, TSC should not manage teachers’ professional development and regulate the teaching profession at the same time. Other professions have self-regulatory mechanisms and bodies that are separate from employers.
Besides, the MPs said that teachers did not get any monetary benefit after the signing of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) 2021-2025. They argued that is not possible for them to shoulder the training costs.
The report comes after Emuhaya MP filed a petition was tabled on the 5th of October 2021 on behalf of the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET).
Milemba, through the petition, pointed out issues regarding the cost of the TPD, selection of institutions to offer the course and whether public participation was done before launch
While KUPPET and the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) acknowledged that the TPD indeed does sharpen the skills of teachers, the Commission should cover the cost of the training.