Qualification for Teaching in Secondary Schools Set At C+ And Above
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has reiterated that it will not lower the qualification grades for candidates who want to join teaching courses for both primary and secondary schools.
The Commission revealed that candidates who will not have achieved a mean grade of C+ in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination will not be allowed to teach in secondary schools even if they have since attained a degree.
Besides, all secondary school teachers will only be allowed to teach subjects for which they have scored a mean grade of C+ and above in their KCSE examination.
The same also applies to their primary school counterparts who will have to attain a mean grade of C (Plain) in their KCSE examination in order to be allowed to teach subjects at the primary level. The Commission has also declared that it will work to improve the quality of education in Kenya.
While addressing teachers in Mombasa, TSC Deputy Director of Staffing Antonia Lentoijoni revealed that even if the qualification requirements were not widely accepted among teachers, they would still proceed in their efforts of improving standards of teaching in schools.
In protests of the issued directives, several headteachers stormed out of the conference as Lentoijoni said that the terms set are not negotiable.
Lentoijoni revealed that TSC has set the standards for improving the quality of education after the emergence of new challenges in society.
“The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has raised the entry requirements of teaching in Kenya in order to have the right kind of people offering quality education to learners,” said Lentoijoni.
This means that teachers who have degrees but have a Mean Grade of C (Plain) or C- (Minus) have been left out and will not be able to teach in secondary schools. The decision was made despite the Kenya National Teachers Union (KNUT) Secretary-General urging the Commission to allow the teachers with Mean Grade of C or C- to teach in secondary schools since a good number of them have masters degrees.
However, the Commission insisted on the decision that teachers wishing to teach in secondary schools must have a mean grade of C+ and above, arguing that this will mean that the right kind of people will be allowed to teach in secondary schools to provide the required quality of education to learners.
The Commission also revealed that the Commission trained 28,000 teachers in recent years to address the shortage of teachers in public schools.
Lentoijoni argued that Kenyan learners deserve a quality education and that is why the requirements were raised.
In addition, she appreciated the governments’ efforts of continuously supporting the recruitment of teachers to address the acute shortage experienced in schools.
She revealed that the Commission took up a different approach by utilizing the internship programme who are in turn assigned experienced teachers to mentor them.
In addition, Lentoijoni applauded teachers for being committed to their work and agreed with Prof George Magoha that teachers are attending classes without necessarily requiring supervision.
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