TTC Teacher Trainees to Get HELB Loan
For many years, Teacher Training College (TTC) students have never received loans from the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) because of not being considered government-sponsored.
According to section 56 of the Universities Act, the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) is mandated to coordinate how government-sponsored students to universities and colleges.
This puts students placed via KUCCPS at a great place as they qualify for funding from HELB.
This year the first group of diploma teacher trainees are going to be placed into 32 public Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) in the country. With this students are set to be placed via KUCCPS, which means that they are going to qualify for funding from the government.
According to the KUCCPS Chief Executive Mercy Wahome, the placement agency had come up with a security system that will be used to ensure that all legible applicants as well as those who shall sit for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) placed to their respective institutions.
Wahome was speaking while attending a two-day meeting on sensitization with principals from colleges at the Thogoto Teacher Training College.
This will mark the first time that KUCCPS will place students to TTCs after the Ministry of Education gave KUCCPS the responsibility to do so.
According to Dr Mercy Wahome, the second batch of students who will join the institution to train on the new Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) will be made aware of the colleges that will receive their applications.
She revealed that all colleges will be required to upload their programmes and announce their capacities on the KUCCPS portal after which students will submit their applications.
“As per the arrangement, all colleges will be required to upload their programmes and declare their capacities on the KUCCPS portal for students to submit their applications,” said Dr Wahome,
The next placement will comprise secondary school leavers from 2000 to 2021.
Before this groundbreaking decision, the Ministry of Education had been tasked with recruiting students for admission to the public primary TTCs.
The director-general of the Ministry of Education concurred that indeed KUCCPS would deliver on its new responsibility.
Principals and their deans of the curriculum were made aware of the KUCCPS mandate at the workshop. Besides they were also sensitized on how to navigate the KUCCPS portals, how to do validation of courses and the placement processes.
They were also shown how to upload programmes and their capacities on the KUCCPS database and sensitized on how to process applications and do inter-institutional transfers.
Apart from the Ministry of education, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and the Kenya Institute OF Curriculum Development (KICD) were the other stakeholders of education that were represented in the meeting.
On his part, Basic Education Principal Secretary Dr Julius Jwan said in the last meeting that the shift to KUCCPS will be gradual and will enable successful students to benefit from HELB.
“The new policy will allow KCSE candidates to choose to be selected for Diploma in Primary Teacher Education (DPTE) or Diploma in Early Childhood Development Teacher Education (DECTE) when applying for post-secondary education training programmes,” said Dr Julius Jwan.
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