Curriculum Support Officers (CSOs), Principals, Headteachers, TSC Sub-County Directors and ICT officers in Kisumu County have received show-cause letters over Teacher Performance Appraisal and Development (TPAD) system 2 report.
According to the Term 3 2021 Appraisal Report, as of the 31st of July 2021, Kisumu County was in position 41 out of 47. The region had a compliance rating of 66.19% leading to a bottom ten rank in the report.
In a letter copied to the secretary for the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), the TSC director of Kisumu County Ibrahim K. Rugut said that the performance of the region in the TPAD report is utterly unacceptable. Besides, he noted the importance of TPAD in the management of learning and teaching in schools across the country.
“By failing to ensure 100% TPAD compliance in your area of jurisdiction means that you have put learning and teaching in a compromising position by 33.81% and academic performance by extension. Those who attained 100% per cent to give evidence of the same,” read the letter.
In May 2021, TSC listed 2,349 primary school teachers and a further 827 secondary school teachers for not filling their TPAD on time.
According to the commission, the Teachers had incomplete TPAD appraisals or were awaiting submission or appraisal or the school heads’ awaiting countersigning.
The teachers in question received show-cause letters over the offenses.
In the 2021 Term 3 TPAD, teachers were given until the 6th of April 2021 to self-appraise, appraisers to appraise them, lesson observations to be conducted, weekly attendance to be filled and then appraisal to be conducted.
Schools have a designated appraiser and counter signer on TPAD. School heads also fill weekly attendance ad do “countersigning”. Lesson observation for teachers is done among themselves. This means that all teachers are involved in the whole process of filling TPAD.
However, the process takes a lot of time and requires access to the internet throughout the filling process. Besides, teachers have to find time to work on their TPAD outside class time. Towards the end of the term, TPAD tends to be slow and unresponsive as it seemingly is not able t allow large numbers of teachers to access it at the same time.
To solve this TSC has instructed teachers to try and avoid the last-minute hurry. However, TSC still maintains that teachers should follow the TPAD calendar which does not have specific timelines for most of the activities. Yet teachers are not allowed to complete the process before the term ends. This means that teachers who leave it late find it very hard to complete the TPAD-filling process as well as getting appraised.
The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) has claimed on multiple occasions that the appraisal tools that TSC has formulated have demoralized teachers and have reduced the teacher-children contact time and is not pocket-friendly.
KNUT argued that teachers spend a lot of time in cyber-cafes trying to handle TPAD and in some instances, TPAD had pitted teachers against headteachers and principals and even against their county directors.
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