Message To P1 Teachers Seeking For Deployment As TSC And KNUT Meet

The meeting between the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and Teachers Union Officials seems to bear fruit as the commission is set to deploy P1 Teachers to teach in Junior secondary school, starting in January 2022.

This comes after TSC officials engage Teachers union officials on the issue. The commission is currently engaging in talks with officials of the Kenya National Union of Teachers, KNUT, led by its secretary-general Colins Oyuu.

However, TSC insists that teachers must meet the requirement for deployment to secondary schools. KNUT is pushing TSC to allow primary school teachers with a degree in secondary option but C plain in KCSE to teach in junior secondary.

TSC will send at least 1,000 P1 teachers to secondary schools in September this year. Principals of secondary schools have already declared and submitted various subject combinations required in their schools.

Members of Parliament (MPs) had asked TSC to allow teachers with a KCSE mean grade of C (plain) or lower who had obtained diplomas, postgraduate diplomas, and degrees from various accredited learning institutions to be promoted deployed.

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Only PTE teachers who scored C+(plus) in the KCSE will be considered for promotion after July, according to the commission’s new plan.

TSC has stopped automatically promoting teachers with higher academic credentials, yet it still deploys 1,000 P1 instructors yearly. TSC CEO Dr Nancy Macharia revealed in parliament that automatic teacher promotion was discontinued in 2014 because it was unsustainable.

According to Macharia, the increase in the number of teachers obtaining higher degrees made the program of automatic promotions unsustainable, so the commission terminated them on January 9, 2014.

“The program was monetarily unsustainable due to the large number of instructors obtaining higher certifications,” Dr Macharia explained.

According to the Commission, there were around 218,077 teachers in public primary schools in 2020. There were 21,632 Diploma-qualified teachers (9,821 men and 11,811 women), and 17,930 Bachelor-qualified teachers (8,627 men and 9,303 women).

About 491 teachers (197 men and 294 women) held master’s or doctoral degrees, with the rest holding certificate credentials. Master’s and doctoral degrees were held by 1, 725 teachers (909 men and 816 women) (PhD). As of 2020, 113,155 teachers were working in post-Primary institutions.

Previously, primary school teachers who earned advanced degrees from a recognized university were immediately promoted to Job Groups J and K. TSC has raised the threshold for instructors who want to work in secondary schools, including junior high.