The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is planning to hire more teachers to help in the 100 percent transition process next year. This shall happen before schools reopen in 2021.
TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia revealed a report during a consultative meeting that lasted two days. After the meeting, she said that they immediately need Ksh 25 Billion to prepare for the reopening of schools. Recently, the government announced that the reopening of schools will happen in January next year.
As the TSC CEO tabled the report she stated that the Commission is planning to hire 12, 000 teachers before schools reopen next year.
The new 12,000 teachers to be hired on internship terms will push the total number of teachers hired on Internship terms to 23, 574 since 2019.
TSC needs Ksh. 17 billion to recruit 26,000 teachers to manage the high enrollment in schools across the country under the 100 percent transition. A further Ksh. 8.1 billion yearly amount will be used to hire 12,500 teachers to cover the normal shortage.
Macharia told the Members of Parliament that the Commission is planning to recruit 12,500 teachers every year for the next five years to solve the problem of teacher shortage in Kenya. The teacher shortage is caused by the government not hiring enough teachers to cope with the high numbers of students in schools but not the unavailability of teachers. There are scores and scores of teachers working either in private schools or as BoM teachers in other schools in the country. Other teachers are just unemployed and are waiting for their chance to come.
Under normal staffing, Dr. Nancy Macharia said that the Commission needs 50,504 teachers to support the currently employed staff.
“Instead (of the required figure) we have only employed 23,700 teachers so far since 2017,” said Dr. Nancy Macharia.
In this financial year, TSC received Ksh. 2.5 billion to hire teachers.
Under the Economic Stimulus Programme, TSC was allocated Ksh. 2.4 Billion more money to hire 12,000 teachers on internship.
Macharia told MPs that it is necessary to meet the needed staffing levels in this COVID-19-affected times that keep causing challenges in learning.
While planning to reopen schools next year, TSC will train 118,000 teachers in the coming month. This will be on the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) for Ksh. 1 billion.
“The commission shall prepare teachers for the reopening of schools through training, capacity building, sensitization, and the induction programs,” Macharia said.
Training is intended to ensure the implementation of the new Curriculum is a success.
TSC trained 339,752 teachers last year at a cost of Ksh. 400 Million. 112, 223 teachers of the 339,752 teachers – 22,417 of them are from private schools underwent training in April.
In August, 105,030 teachers underwent training, and 21,495 of them were from private schools.
In December, 121, 499 teachers were trained among them 23,143 tutors from private schools.
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TSC has promoted 55,000 teachers this year with 3,900 scheduled for interviews of promotion.
Data from the Commission shows that some 460 teachers have undergone interviews and are going to be promoted soon.
Members of Parliament proposed a policy on the promotion of teachers who have achieved the required qualifications to be heads of institutions.
They stressed that fairness shall be key in all exercises of promotion. They also raised concerns over transfers of teachers, especially those who are school principals or headteachers.
They said that some schools in the constituencies they come from have seen many changes at the management level. They said transfers affect operations in schools.
Nancy Macharia on the other hand said that the vacancies are filled competitively with the intention of promoting national values, fairness equity non-discrimination.
For offenses, TSC has punished 1,165 teachers for offenses.