•The teachers will be recruited from the more than 300,000 trained but unemployed in the country.
•Currently, education consumes 25.9 per cent of the national budget. In the 2022-23 financial year, the sector was allocated Sh544.4 billion
Image: MAURICE ALAL
The government has committed to bridging the 116,000 teacher deficit in public schools within two financial years.
Education CS Ezekiel Machogu said the government will address the shortage by employing 58,000 teachers annually.
The teachers will be recruited from the more than 300,000 trained but unemployed in the country.
Under the President’s direction, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has initiated the exercise of recruiting 30,000 teachers by January 2023 in the first phase of fulfilling the promise to mitigate the teacher shortage in public schools.
The Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) welcomed the move but termed it a drop in the ocean.
Knut secretary general Collins Oyuu and his Kuppet counterpart Akelo Misori said the recruitment of 30,000 teachers still leaves a huge teacher deficit in the country.
Machogu said the government commits to working with teachers as they seek to improve the teaching and learning outcomes that will give the country the best citizens in future.
He pointed out that the Kenya Kwanza government has a deliberate education charter that puts the teacher at the centre of the master plan.
"The education charter seeks the establishment of a national education fund to mobilise grants, bursaries and scholarships from private and public sponsors to cater for non-tuition costs," Machogu said.
The CS speech was read on his behalf by the Nyanza regional education director Nelson Sifuna during the 62nd annual delegates’ conference at Citam in Kisumu on Wednesday.
He noted that currently, parents meet the cost of transport, meals, uniform and boarding fees under the Free Primary Education and the Free Day Secondary Education.
Machogu reiterated that President William Ruto's administration will work towards strengthening day secondary schools to guarantee access to quality education and reduce the cost of education.
Currently, education consumes 25.9 per cent of the national budget. In the 2022-23 financial year, the sector was allocated Sh544.4 billion, the highest share for any ministry out of the Sh3.31 trillion budget.
Machogu further said the government recognises that education reforms will only succeed if the teachers sit at the table of any consultations that lead to the reforms in the sector.
"This explains why the President appointed eight classroom teachers to be members of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms to ensure their classroom experiences inform the dialogues with the public on the education we want," he said.
Based on the team’s interim report, the President directed that Grades 7, 8 and 9 be domiciled in primary schools.
Machogu commended teachers for giving their input to the Working Party, which must have been an integral part of making the recommendations.
On higher education, he said the Education Charter proposes to establish a public university in every county in tandem with the University Act 2012.
The universities will be made to focus on their comparative advantage in their training.
To increase access and reduce the cost of university education and implement a 100 per cent transition to higher education institutions, Machogu said the government will increase the number of technical universities from the current three to eight across the eight regions.
Among the other major proposals in the Education Charter is the provision of free sanitary pads for primary and secondary schoolgirls to ensure a 100 per cent return-to-school policy for teen mothers.
The government also plans to build low-cost boarding schools in arid areas, provide grants to county governments for ECDE learners and ensure learners and teachers in insecurity-prone areas are safe.
On Technical and Vocational Training, Machogu said the government intends to allocate conditional grants to county governments for the construction of new ones.
In addition to the existing 1,200, the government will construct 250 VTCs in the wards that currently do not have any.