TSC Rolls out Refreshers Courses That Will Affect Teachers’ Careers
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) rolled out the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) programme on the 22nd of September 2021 at the Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA) in Karen, a move that is set to have huge ramifications on the teaching landscape.
The TPD will commit teachers in all public schools to undergo refresher courses that will have a huge effect on their entire careers. This is because the TPD will be used in promoting teachers as provided for in TSC’S Career Progression Guidelines (CPG). TSC’s CPG has been in force since the 8th of November 2017, and the TPD modules are mandatory conditions for the promotion of teachers from one job grade to another.
The CPG document states, “Teachers will be needed to undergo professional development programmes to enhance their career progression as provided for in Regulation 48 of the Code of Regulations for Teachers.”
To meet promotion requirements as per the CPG, a teacher must have funded vacancies in the approved establishment, meet the minimum qualifications per grade, have the required experience and prove to have performed in his or her duties to a satisfactory level.
331,232 teachers will be directly affected by this 2020 demand from the Commission. However, teachers who are on study leave and those having disciplinary cases as per the 2021 Economic Survey Report from primary, secondary and teacher training colleges will be excluded from this.
This means that TPD modules will be a new tool used for the promotion of teachers, in addition to the teachers’ academic credentials.
According to the TSC Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the TPD modules will last for the entirety of the time teachers will be in the profession. The modules are structured in six-tier levels of competency where each level will take five years to finish after which every teacher will renew his/her teaching certificate. Teachers who will not have complied could lose their teaching certificates upon failure to renew.
The 2021 Economic Survey Report revealed that out of 218,077 teachers in public primary schools, 419 teachers hold Masters and Doctorate (Ph. D) degrees, 17,930 teachers hold Bachelor’s degrees, and 21,632 have Diplomas while 178,024 teachers hold Certificates. These figures exclude teachers on unpaid study leave and those having disciplinary cases against them.
On the other hand, in secondary schools and Teacher Training Colleges, the 2021 Economic Survey Report indicated that out of the 113,155 teachers, 1725 held Masters and Doctorate (Ph. D) degrees, 108,109 held Bachelor’s degrees, 11 held Post Graduate Diploma in Education and 3,310 teachers had Diplomas.
The entry requirements for the TPD module have not been revealed at the point of writing this article and it has not yet been revealed whether this will be addressed in the near future.
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