Teachers To Pay Sh.6000 To Renew Their Certificates As TSC Issues New Directives

According to new policy guidelines, teachers in public schools in Kenya will be renewing their professional certificates every five years. This will demand teachers to undertake in-service professional training lasting for five years upon which they will get their certificates renewed.

This renew will be based on a professional development roll out which will run for 30 years and has six modules each lasting five years. Every teacher will be paying 6,000 shillings for each module

Kenyatta University, Mount Kenya University, Riara, and Kenya Education Management Institute will be responsible for the training. According to TSC, the four institutions have been contracted on an annual long agreement with an option for extension.

Teachers Service Commission, the employer of tutors in public schools, on Wednesday rolled out refresher courses for the 340,000 tutors across the country.

“We had a very hard time in negotiating for teachers because when you are at the negotiations table, they referred to teachers as unskilled or semi-skilled,” Nancy Macharia said

She added that they need to see their teachers conduct research projects and write academic and acclaimed research papers to improve the teaching quality in schools. With the rollout, Macharia argues there is going to be respected for the teaching profession.

This new training policy was first mooted in 2019 when the TSC said that all public-school teachers in Kenya would be required to undertake teacher development courses after the pre-service (college) training, which will earn them a second certificate from the Teachers Service Commission.

The announcement comes after TSC suggested eliminating the Bachelor of Education degree as a prerequisite for employment. Teachers would instead complete a three-year Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree and then enroll in a one-year postgraduate study to get a TSC number.