TSC Announces Teachers Recruitment Plan

TSC Announces Teachers Recruitment Plan. According to the TSC’s chief, the 20,000 teachers employed on a contract basis in February won’t start working in permanent, pensionable posts until January 2025.

According to Nancy Macharia, TSC intends to hire 20,000 more contract teachers in the fiscal year beginning in July in order to boost junior secondary school (JSS) enrollment. This amount, though, will fall short of what is needed.

Recruitment will cost Sh4.7 billion. According to Ms. Macharia, the commission wouldn’t be able to find the additional JSS instructors it would need to hire if the terms of employment were changed to permanent and pensionable.

However, she continued, teachers hired to replace those who left as a result of natural attrition would be hired on a permanent basis and would be eligible for pensions.

The CEO insisted that the teaching quality will not be compromised and that all employed teachers are qualified.

The TSC is given Sh322 billion in the Budget Policy Statement for 2023–2024.

TSC started hiring contract instructors, sometimes known as trainees, in 2019. Permanent and retired teachers frequently have precedence in hiring processes and receive higher evaluation scores than non-participating applicants.

Primary school interns earn a “stipend” of Sh15,000, while secondary school interns get paid Sh20,000.

According to the amount of teachers who register for employment when they are advertised, there are more than 300,000 unemployed instructors even though there is a staffing crisis in schools. 

Ms. Macharia acknowledged that around half of the instructors assigned to JSS had not yet received payment, but she blamed the delay on the fact that they did not all report to their respective schools at the same time.

The TSC’s head claimed that in order to promote teachers who have taught the same grade for an extended period of time, the commission needs Sh2.2 billion.

The budget forecasts make no mention of a new teacher compensation plan.

The non-monetary collective bargaining agreement that the unions and employer agreed to in 2021 has been requested to be renegotiated.

For combined cadre promotions and yearly salary hikes, the commission has allotted Sh6 billion, nonetheless.

Julius Melly, the commission’s head, asked TSC to create a formula to calculate the number of instructors needed for JSS.

Within the following two fiscal years, the Kenya Kwanza administration had promised to hire 116,000 teachers. 

As a way to maximize the government’s return on investment, Mr. Melly also argued for effective instructor monitoring.

According to Ms. Macharia, in order to support its activities and programs at the county and sub-county levels, the TSC needed Sh300 million.