Thousands of teachers who have spent years stuck in one job group may soon have a way up, as the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) puts the finishing touches on a revised Career Progression Guidelines document.
The big shift, according to TSC, is that teachers would be able to climb to the top of the profession while staying in the classroom. They would no longer have to become school heads or take on administrative roles to move ahead.
The review follows complaints from teachers who have waited years for a promotion, and from those holding acting administrative posts with no clear path to being confirmed in them.
TSC Commissioner Antonina Lentoijoni said the commission had noticed that promotion chances differ from one county to another, and that it was working to make progression fairer and easier to predict.
She was speaking at Moi Forces Academy in Nairobi during a teachers’ sports fun day, held ahead of World Teachers’ Day celebrations on Monday. Teachers, education officials and union representatives attended, and promotion was the issue that kept coming up as educators put their questions to the commission.
The timing is no accident. The teaching workforce keeps growing, and with it the pressure to offer training and a chance to move up. As of June 30, TSC had directly employed more than 415,000 teachers.
Lentoijoni gave a snapshot of what the commission has been doing: more than 220,000 teachers have been retooled to cope with the demands of Competency-Based Education. A total of 128,462 teachers have been promoted after competitive interviews.
Interviews are currently underway to fill 34,016 vacancies across different job groups. She added that the conversion of intern teachers to permanent and pensionable terms has begun. For the current financial year, TSC has been given Sh4.9 billion to hire 20,000 more interns.
The commission’s budget, she noted, has swelled from about Sh290 billion in 2022 to Sh424 billion in 2025/26, a sign of how much more is now expected of the teaching service.
The Nairobi region celebrations also honoured teachers and school heads for their work in teaching, technology, leadership and nurturing talent.
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