The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is planning to re-train more than 67,000 teachers on handling the first-ever Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) class currently in Junior Secondary School (JSS) at Grade 7.
According to a memo issued by TSC, the 67,000 teachers include 11,192 teachers who have a mean score of C+ (Plus) and above in their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) and were recently deployed by the Commission from primary schools to teach in JSS.
Among the teachers are 30,550 regular teachers who were recruited in January 2023 and 2,235 teachers who were recruited in Special Needs Education (SNE) from 745 public primary schools who will be handled by 196 Trainers of Trainers (ToTs) during the exercise.
This is in addition to 22,482 head teachers in regular primary schools as of September 2022 and 745 head teachers in SNE primary schools. This is according to a memo signed by the Commission’s Director of Quality Assurance and Standards Reuben Mugwuku Nthamburi.
The internal memo dated the 15th of February, 2023 was addressed to all TSC Regional and County Directors of Education.
“The purpose of this memo is to kindly request you to invite the TOTs recently retooled for teacher retooling, headteachers for both regular and SNE, three teachers from regular, teachers from special schools, units and integrated school and teachers from private schools,” said Nthamburi in the memo.
According to the memo, the teachers will undergo re-training on the CBC and Competency Based Assessment (CBA) starting March 13, 2023, until March 19, 2023, which will be a face-to-face training model in the Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) and other selected venues.
The re-tooling will involve ToTs and Master Trainers who will offer professional support and a training model that will involve head teachers and teachers of Languages, Sciences, Mathematics, Humanities and Technical subjects.
According to TSC, the smart cascade model of training will comprise a multi-agency approach with headteachers undergoing training for three days, teachers being trained for six days by TOTs while the Master of Trainers will be tasked to offer professional support during the retooling exercise.
Teachers from non-arid and semi-arid lands (NASALs)