Why there is need to split TSC functions

The Parliamentary Committee on Education is planning to break up the functions of the Teachers Service Commission.

According to press reports, Parliament wants registration and regulation of teachers separated from the employment function of TSC.

This is a welcomed move. The constitution confers TSC the power to register, and by default, to regulate the conduct of teachers.

It has also vested the power to determine and review the standards of education and training of persons entering the teaching service as well as review the demand for and the supply of teachers.

The TSC is principally an employer of teachers for public primary and secondary schools.

The power to recruit and employ registered teachers and manage their careers, transfers, discipline and terminate them are difficult functions. They require resources, time, energy, and skill to do them.

The purely human resource management and development functions of the TSC takes more than half of the time available to the commission.

TSC has not demonstrated that it has resources, time, energy and personnel to undertake the regulatory functions of the teaching profession as the body solely created to do that would have done.  

In the first place, TSC is not the only employer of teachers in the country. The Kenya Private Schools Association is an employer, in its own right of teachers.

There is also Association of International Schools in Kenya which offer International Baccalaureate, the UK national curriculum, a US-style model or the International Primary Curriculum. They also employ teachers a significant number of which, are expatriate teachers.

While in law TSC has power to register all teachers teaching in Kenyan schools, it doesn’t have the wherewithal to provide professional leadership or to support teachers' understanding of standards and commitments of the teaching profession.

It doesn’t have the moral authority to oversee the upholding and enhancing standards in the teaching profession in institutions not under its direct control.

It cannot do for several reasons. As employer of teachers, TSC cannot walk into the premises of rival employer to oversee the conduct of teachers they have employed.

Teachers under TSC employment deliver a national curriculum which is wholly different from the different curricular offered by schools under Association of International Schools in Kenya or under KPSA which offer international curricular.

TSC cannot therefore purport to regulate the professional conduct or development of such teachers.

Nor has government given the TSC the resources and personnel to discharge this function beyond simply registering the teachers.

Clearly, teachers in this country don’t have the professional support and leadership other professionals like lawyers, doctors, engineers, and others have.

There is therefore need for an institution, separate from TSC to regulate the registration, conduct and professional development of the teaching profession.

The body will develop instruments, in consultation with employers and the sanction of the Education Cabinet Secretary, to promote and regulate professional standards in teaching applicable to all practicing teachers.

As it is, the Teachers Professional Development programme the TSC wants teachers under its employment to undertake, is not applicable to teachers under the KPSA or Association of International Schools.

A formation of an entirely new body will mean that teachers both in public schools and those in private schools will need to undergo standard professional training.

The independent body will also mean that Parliament review the TSC power to advise the national government on matters relating to the teaching profession.

It is in fact the envisioned body, with sufficient mandate to advise the government on such matters, and develop appropriate statutory instruments to the Minister for Education, to sanction.

-Edited by SKanyara