• Macharia said at least 17,914 posts will go to primary school teachers across the grades.
• She said in the past TSC failed to attract enough applicants for promotional positions even after lowering the requirements.
Image: CHARLES MGHENYI
Teachers have been urged to apply for the recently advertised 36,505 vacancies for promotions.
Teachers Service Commission chief executive officer Nancy Macharia said at least 17,914 posts will go to primary school teachers across the grades.
She said in the past TSC failed to attract enough applicants for promotional positions even after lowering the requirements.
“This is more prevalent in Special Needs Education where we are having a serious shortage. I wish to encourage those who have been invited for the interviews from December 4 to ensure they attend without failure,” Macharia said.
The interviews will run from December 4 to 16.
Macharia was speaking in Mombasa during the ongoing Kenya Primary School Headteachers Association annual delegates conference.
In this financial year, TSC was allocated Sh1 billion for the promotion of teachers.
“The commission last received funds for the promotion of teachers in 2011. We therefore wish to thank the government for providing Sh1 billion in the financial year 2023-24 for the promotion of teachers,” Macharia said.
She said the government also allocated funds to recruit 56,000 teachers in the past year, the majority of whom were posted to the Junior School.
“I wish to urge all unemployed teachers to always do their homework and apply for advertised jobs in any part of the country, and shun the practice of only seeking jobs advertised in their home counties,” Macharia said.
She said in the recently concluded recruitment exercise, 1,123 vacancies were not filled across the country as advertised.
“This should not be the case when we have many unemployed teachers in other counties who could have filled these positions,” Macharia said.
Last month, TSC completed the training of 56,928 teachers. They included 48,550 newly recruited Junior School teachers and 8,378 teachers who were deployed from primary to Junior School.
On transfer of teachers, the TSC boss said they have now automated the process to provide teachers with ease of applying for transfers.
“One can now track the processing of transfer requests. The module ensures that the transfer approval process is online where the heads of institutions, subcounty directors, county directors, regional directors and the head office carry out their actions online,” she said.
In addition, the module provides the capability to generate reports on the movement of teachers between workstations, she said.
“We are upgrading the current transfer module to make it more intelligent such that it will match teachers transferring from one station to another thus avoiding human error and manipulation,” Macharia said.
She said they are also piloting a transfer module that will match teacher applications to the appropriate vacancies to be filled.
On the management of the Comprehensive School (Pre-primary to Grade 9), TSC said they will allow the current primary school heads to continue with the mandate.
“The commission had initially issued guidelines which gave you a one-year interim period to manage the Junior Secondary level, allow me to announce that you continue with this mandate as the commission consults with stakeholders over the rollout of the ongoing education reforms to come up with an administrative structure,” she said.
TSC is also currently digitising its estimated 108 million records.
These records mainly target active teachers’ and secretariat personal files, discipline files, and legal documents, amongst others, according to Macharia.
“The main objective of this automation is to increase efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery to the teachers as key stakeholders,” she said.
By October 31, 2023, 383,994 teachers’ files out of 402,000 (96%) could be accessed online, she said, adding that by completion of this digitalisation process, teachers will be able to access service from the comfort of their homes and offices.
She said the full automation of the Teacher Registration Process is in line with the presidential directive to digitalise government service, therefore, the commission has fully automated and made it accessible on eCitizen platform the teacher registration process.
“This means that a teacher who is applying for registration can start the process from wherever he or she is and receive the certificate of registration through email without any human interface. This service became operational with effect from November 1 2023,” she said.