Kenyan Schools Face a Shortage Of 96000 Teachers

By Wilkister Alao / July 3, 2019

A new report by the Teachers Service Commission shows that Kenyan schools are struggling with teachers’ shortage despite the country having a huge number of trained and registered teachers who are not employed.

According to the report, Kenya has 328,324 teachers, who are trained and registered with the Teachers Service Commission but are yet to be employed by the government and at the moment, about 96,000 teachers are needed.

Primary schools are said to lack 38,054 teachers while secondary schools have a shortage of 58291 teachers.

This badly affects the teacher to learners ratio especially with the government’s introduction of 100 percent transition from primary to secondary school.

In the last four months, 16,422 trained teachers applied for teaching positions in government schools but they were not hired.

963 applications were made in Kakamega County, 950 in Bungoma, 949 in Kisii and 605 in Siaya.

Garissa, Wajir Turkana and Tana River counties recorded the lowest number of applications, with only 19,21,34 and 35 applications respectively.

Of these applicants, the majority were those with bachelor’s degrees in education whose number stood at 6872, followed by 1596 diploma holders. 5686 certificate holders applied for teaching positions in pre-primary and primary schools.

Bungoma, Nakuru, Kisii and Kitui counties recorded the highest number of unemployed teachers, standing at 12697,12675,12233, and 12506 respectively.

With the government having deployed teachers away from their home counties, marginalized areas such as Wajir, Tana River, Garissa, and Mandera have been the most affected in terms of teachers’ shortage.

The government allocated 3.2 billion shillings to be used for the teacher’s recruitment. The amount will only carter for about 5000 teachers yet 12,626 teachers need to be recruited.

The Teachers Service Commission said that it requires 82 billion shillings to recruit teachers so that it addresses the teachers’ shortage problem by 2023. That translates to 16.4 billion shillings every year until 2023.