Schools are short of more than 100,000 teachers, the TSC has said.
Teachers Service Commission chief executive officer Nancy Macharia spoke on Monday when she officiated the opening of the KCSE exams in Kilifi North.
She said the shortage has been occasioned by underfunding from the government.
“The government gives us money to hire about 5,000 teachers a year. When we advertise for vacancies we get overwhelming applications but our hands are tied,” Macharia said.
The TSC boss said the commission is engaging interns as a stop-gap measure to bridge the gap.
She said the commission shares the positions equitably.
Kilifi North MP Owen Baya has been calling for affirmative action for Kilifi county in the hiring of teachers.
He said Kilifi North alone has a deficit of 2,000 teachers in both primary and secondary schools.
The MP said the teachers’ deficit will jeopardise the success of the competence-based curriculum in the county.
“8-4-4 messed the education system in Kenya. CBC is here to fix it but as a county we may not get the intended results.
"Our students may not compete fairly with other regions because we have a big shortage of teachers. To make this a success we need more teachers,” he said
Baya said education in the county is expensive because parents have had to hire teachers through the board of management.
He said a school like Bahari Girls’ National School has employed 10 teachers who are being paid by parents.
“If a national school has such a big deficit what about the extra county schools," he said.
The legislator said the burden of employing teachers is now pushed to the parents.
"This should be a wakeup call to TSC to employ more teachers in Kilifi,” he said.
(Edited by Bilha Makokha)
