The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is set to train teachers who shall handle Grade Seven learners in Junior Secondary Schools (JSS).
According to a memo dated the 15th of February 2023 and copied to all TSC Regional and County Directors, Quality Assurance and Standards Director Dr Mugwuku Nthamburi said that the retooling process will involve Trainers of Trainers (ToTs) and Master Trainers who will offer professional training and support.
The Commission will train all newly-recruited Grade 7 teachers and those yet-to-be-deployed primary school teachers and acting junior secondary school principals.
The train will be held on a face-to-face basis using the smart cascade model of training between the 13th and 19th of March, 2023. It will be held in Teachers’ Training Colleges (TTCs) and selected venues in counties. Headteachers and teachers of languages, science, mathematics, humanities and technical subjects.
On teacher capacity development, headteachers will be retooled for three days face-to-face and teachers will be retooled for six days physically. ToTs will retool teachers for six days while master trainers will offer professional support during the training.
The training will be non-residential for non-ASAL areas because teachers will be funded with transport money. For ASAL teachers it will be residential as they will be provided accommodation allowance.
it will also be residential for Special Needs Education (SNE) teachers in both ASAL and non-ASAL regions, ToTs and regular teachers. They will also be provided with an accommodation allowance.
Primary schools will identify three teachers and the headteacher for retooling as follows; headteachers for both regular and SNE, teachers with Bachelor’s Degree or Diploma in Education with at least a C+ (Plus) mean grade or its equivalent and two teaching subjects, and teachers currently employed under junior secondary school level.
The teachers targeted will be clustered in the areas: English, Literature, Foreign and Indigenous languages, Kiswahili and Kenya Sign Language, Pure Sciences (Integrated Science – Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Health Education) Mathematics, Humanities (Social Studies comprising of Citizenship, Geography, History) and Religious Studies comprising of CRE, IRE, Hindu, HRE and PPI) and life skills.
Technical subjects comprise of Pre-Technical and Pre-Career Education, Business Studies, Sports and Physical Education, Home Science and Art and Design.
There are 11,192 teachers targeted to participate while those who were recruited by the Commission this January are 30,550 teachers.
In SNEs, 2,235 teachers are targeted from primary and 196 ToTs. 22,482 headteachers will be attending from schools from all the 47 counties in the country with SNE headteachers attending from 745 schools.
A total of 67,446 teachers across the country will undergo training.
TSC Directors will invite the ToTs who underwent training recently, headteachers for both regular and SNEs, three regular teachers and teachers from special schools for further retooling.
The TSC Directors will also invite teachers from private schools and inform them to cater for expenses on transport, meals and accommodation and identify and prepare appropriate training venues.
Last year the Commission trained 60,000 secondary school teachers on the CBC to handle the first cohort of 1.2 million JSS learners who joined Grade Seven. The training was conducted in April last year.
The TSC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) said that the training will be continuing to support all teachers and equip them with the necessary skills to effectively deliver the CBC.
All field officers and CSOs also underwent training to understand the curriculum and enable them to give instructional support during the implementation of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC).