TSC To Hire 30,000 Teachers On Pensionable And Permanent Terms

The Government is set to employ over 30,000 teachers starting January 2023 to mitigate the nationwide teacher-student ratio gap.

Speaking in Komarock on Wednesday, October 12, President William Ruto added that the recruitment drive will be the first phase of the process whose end goal is to hire 116,000 teachers.

“I understand that we have a huge shortage of teachers in the country. And we agreed that during the elections we will consistently and deliberately reduce the gap between the number of teachers in the school and those supposed to be in the school,” he announced.

“Beginning January, we are going to begin phase one. We will recruit 30,000 teachers. We are going to recruit both permanent and pensionable as well as those on an internship basis,” Ruto added.

President Ruto disclosed that discussions with the Teacher Service Commission (TSC) to draft the way forward for recruitment were already complete.

Ruto noted that within five years, the government will have recruited enough teachers who will be distributed in all schools across the country.

At the Komarock Primary School opening, Ruto recognized the efforts of the qualified volunteer teachers in the schools.

A communiqué issued by the State House also stated that President Ruto plans to work with the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) to upgrade school infrastructure, as well as expand the school feeding in a bid to boost enrolment and performance.

He noted that the government will also look for ways to increase the number of schools both in primary and secondary levels.

“We want all our children to learn in an environment where there are enough classrooms and enough teachers and we can have the meaningful acquisition of knowledge in our schools.”

During the annual ‘World Teachers Day’ celebrations last week, Teachers Service Commission (TSC) CEO Dr Nancy Macharia announced the hiring and posting of 14,460 new teachers across the country.

This came following an allocation of Ksh.3.7 billion by the Treasury in April to address the shortage which has partly been attributed to the 100% transition policy by the government that seeks to ensure all students who complete their primary education are fully enrolled in secondary schools.

Dr. Macharia at the time said Treasury had allocated Ksh.2.5 billion to TSC for the recruitment of 5,000 permanent teachers, and Ksh.1.2 billion for the hiring of 6,000 of their intern counterparts.

TSC had previously acknowledged a severe teacher deficiency in both primary and secondary schools, revealing that it was short of 114,581 teachers