Teachers Face Long Wait As TSC Promises Promotion Results In January

Thousands of teachers who sat promotion interviews this month will have to be patient. The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) says results for more than 30,000 vacancies should come out in January, after the September interviews wrap up and the scores are pulled together.

It is one of the biggest promotion exercises the commission has run in years, and it comes after a long dry spell. Teachers have complained for ages about stagnation and about the Career Progression Guidelines (CPG), and earlier promotion rounds drew claims of irregularities.

In all, TSC advertised 34,016 slots; the money, Ksh 2 billion, comes from the 2026/2027 budget, and applications were made online.

The numbers matter because of how rarely this happens. Responding to complaints after the 2025 promotions, the commission admitted that it had held promotion interviews only three times in the previous ten years.

That gap, TSC said, left a pile of eligible teachers waiting and caused stagnation across every cadre. Dedicated funding like this is exactly what the commission had been asking Parliament for.

How TSC Conducted the Interview

Primary school teachers were interviewed over six days, from 8th to 15th September 2026, at regional and county level by field directors.

Post-primary teachers, meaning those in secondary schools and Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs), went next, together with Curriculum Support Officers (CSOs). Their interviews ran for seven days, from 17th to 25th September. The Director of Staffing led this phase, working with regional, county and sub-county directors.

About 126,000 teachers applied, but only 78,732 made the shortlist and got an interview. That means roughly 47,000 were cut before they even reached the panel.

Even so, there are far more people than posts. With just over 34,000 slots, the shortlisted candidates outnumber the vacancies by more than two to one, and that is before you count everyone shut out at the application stage.

TSC had to re-advertise 1,631 vacancies because too few teachers applied. The commission pointed to the CPG rule requiring teachers to have spent at least three years in their current grade. It has since relaxed that to two years.

There was pressure from another side too. P1 teachers who had been deployed to junior schools were locked out by the same rule, and for many of them it felt like red tape rather than a fair test of merit.

Read Also: TSC Teachers’ Salaries And Allowances Under The 2025–2029 CBA