The Teachers Service Commission will hire 5,000 teachers to support the 100 per cent transition programme, CEO Nancy Macharia said yesterday.
This will bring to 13,700 the number of new teachers the commission will have hired since last year. The state needs Sh2.5 billion to recruit the 5,000 teachers.
“We are working on modalities so we advertise. When we get the 5,000, then it means that we have taken care of Form 2,” Macharia said.
Macharia spoke at Ngong Township Primary School in Kajiado. The CEO was accompanied by Education PS Belio Kipsang.
In April last year, Macharia told Parliament’s Education Committee that teacher deficit was 155,605. She said the commission needed to hire 20,000 annually over five years to close the gap. Macharia said the TSC had 312,060 teachers, while 291,635 were unemployed.
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Yesterday Macharia said they hope the government will allocate more funds in 2019-20 to hire more teachers to handle those joining Form 1 this year.
“With all these things in place, the competency based curriculum will be on course and the transition will be taken care of,” Macharia said.
Macharia said 268,000 teachers have been trained to handle the CBC up to Grade 3.
The 2-6-3-3-3 curriculum was rolled out nationally in January from Pre-primary I and II and Grades 1-3.
Kipsang said field officers will assist in mentoring teachers and supervising the new curriculum.
Following the announcement to hire 5,000 teachers by Macharia, a Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers Narok branch official termed the move ‘laughable’.
The official said the move will not address the shortage of teachers.
unhappy
Narok Kuppet executive secretary Charles Ng’eno said the number is so small and cannot address the ballooning number of learners enrolling in secondary schools.
He said hiring only 5,000 teachers is a drop in the ocean and the government’s policy of 100 per cent transition may fail if more teachers are not hired.
“The TSC should get serious and hire teachers if the government’s policy is to succeed. The number that the TSC chief executive said will be hired will not be enough to solve the shortage in four counties,” Ng’eno said. He spoke in his office in Narok town.
Ng’eno said the shortage in secondary schools in Narok is 1,000.
The unionist urged the commission to petition Parliament to increase the allocation it normally receives from Treasury to hire more teachers. He said the national shortage is more than 80,000.
“There is a danger of this policy failing since there will be no teachers to attend to learners. We have schools that have had an enrollment of more than 200 per cent, which means they need to double the number of teachers,” Ng’eno said.
free education
He said the government’s pledge of free access to education will remain a dream as the cost of hiring teachers will be passed over to parents by the schools’ boards of management. “Most school incur recurrent expenditure by paying teachers that they have been forced to hire. Now with the 100 per cent transition, schools will be forced to engage more teachers,” he said.
Ng’eno also urged the Ministry of Education to allocate more funds to schools to establish infrastructure.
He said some schools have been forced to accommodate learners in dining halls. Others have over 100 students in a classroom, the unionist said.
“Most schools have strained their facilities and there is need to pump more resources to these schools. The crisis that most schools are undergoing is too much. This is the time to borrow from the consolidated account,” he said.