Eleven out of the 42 Kenyan tribes do not have a single teacher in primary or Secondary schools in the country, a report by the TSC shows.
The report was tabled before the National Assembly’s National Cohesion and Equal Opportunity Committee.
The Teachers Service Commission admitted that only 32 tribes constitute the 322,264 teaching workforce registered across the country.
Some 219,782 teachers are registered as teachers in primary schools and 102,582 are secondary schools.
The report exclusively obtained by the Star indicates that the Mbeere, Nubi, Taveta, Tharaka, Galla, Konso and Waklawana tribes are among the communities yet to produce a teacher.
Others are Waat, Guljeel, Kenyan American, and Leysan tribes.
Teaching is considered one of the most inclusive area where all communities have equal chance given the spread of public schools in every village and the fact that recruitment is always done locally.
Appearing before the committee chaired by Nominated MP Maina Kamanda, TSC Secretary Nancy Macharia cited lack of applicants from some communities, cultural biases in career choices and historical challenges relating to education access as some of the key challenges in ensuring diversity.
“For instance, access to education in ASAL areas remains limited. Inevitably, this has led to general disparity in competency levels [technical knowledge and experience] in different parts of the country. This disparity is apparent in the ethnic representation in TSC staff population,” Macharia said.
The committee has been probing ethnic and gender composition of various state agencies after the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution.
The Constitution requires that not more than one-third of the personnel of any state agency are of the same gender or ethnic group.
According to the commission’s records, the teaching profession has more members of the Kikuyu community (17.8 per cent), followed by Kalenjin (17.5 per cent) and Luhya (15.3 per cent).
Kambas are number four with 11.6 per cent followed closely by Luos (11.4 per cent) and Kisiis (8.5 per cent).
The ethnic composition, however, gets thinner at TSC’s secretariat staff where only 26 communities are represented in the secretariat which has 2,969 members.
Seven out 26 tribes account for 2442 positions in the secretariat, leaving a paltry 527 seats to be shared by the remaining 19 tribes.
From the commission’s records, there are 741 members from the Kikuyu community at the secretariat followed by Kalenjin (432), Kamba (345), Luhya (259), Meru (234), Luos (217) and Kisii (214).
The secretariat is headed by the commission’s secretary and plays the crucial mandate of implementing teacher management policies.
Macharia said the discrepancy is as a result of oversupply to the commission by communities that had access to education and training opportunities due to their geographical positioning.
“This contrasts other areas like ASAL areas hence there exists a high staff representation from Nairobi, Central, Rift Valley, western and Nyanza regions in the secretariat staff of the Commission,” she said.
