TSC advertised 9,000 vacancies for both primary and secondary schools. This is after the commission was allocated 2.5b for employment of teachers.
Qualified teachers were called upon to make their applications online through the TSC Portal www.tsc.go.ke. Qualified candidates were only allowed to make an application on only three vacancies per candidate, amounting to only three schools. Teachers have shunned this act by saying that the number of slots accorded to teachers were very few.
After successful applications, shortlisting will be done by the TSC and a merit list will be generated and will be sent to subcounty directors of education who inturn will send individual list to principals in schools that had a vacancy for employment.
Worst of it all, some counties delay to send the merit lists to principals and if they do, the principals also in turn delay to send the text messages to shortlisted candidates. Some candidates have been claiming of receiving interview invitation messages late and to be precise, a day to the interview date which is against the TSC guidelines which states that, shortlisted candidates will be notified seven days earlier before the day of interview.
As we all know, in any interview there must be a tie of candidates scooping the same marks in the process of interviews. Initially, it has been that incase of a tie, the panelists tend to look at the KCSE mean grade to break the tie, and if the mean grade is still the same, they were looking at the Grades in the teaching subjects and if hey are the same too, they were narrowing down to the KCPE marks in order to break that tie. But if all these fails, they were checking on the teaching practice grade that will now break the tie.
All candidates having this knowledge, it is a different approach as the Teacher’s service Commission has introduce a new approach of breaking the tie. They have now overlooked the form four grade as the first parameter that breaks the tie and they are now using the Teaching Practice grade. This has left many teachers questioning the credibility of the process and terming it as barbaric and lack of transparency in these interviews.
The teachers have sworn not to leave any stone unturned as they are set to make noise to the TSC boss Nancy Macharia so that this parameter they are using to break the tie can be removed once and for all as it is inconveniencing some candidates as some Universities tend to award the Teaching practice grades the ways the know you.
Therefore teachers, as you attend the interviews, just bear in mind that in case of a tie, your Teaching practice grade will be used to break that tie. Can you check your possibility of winning that interview by comparing your Teaching practice grade if you feel you are competitive in that interview.
