Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has started the process under which a total of 1,000 PTE teachers will be deployed to teach in secondary schools this year.
Already in the past two years a total of 2,000 P1 graduate teachers were promoted to teach in secondary schools.
TSC had advertised 1,000 in 2019 and another 1,000 in September last year and has ended issuing posting letters for successful applicants.
Those who have been started at job grade C2 at pay scale 34,955 per month and will move to job grade C3 on completion of three years as prescribed in the Career Progression Guidelines (CPG) for Teachers.
In July 2021 TSC advertised for another 1,000 deployment vacancies for practicing primary school teachers to apply.
As of July 2020, at least 6,347 primary school teachers have a C+ in KCSE and a C+ degree in two teaching subjects, so they are currently eligible to teach in secondary schools.
There have been calls for TSC to increase the number of teachers each year as well as to make the assigned numbers in each county public following complaints from a section of teachers that bypassed their county by getting only a few slots during the exercise. has gone.
TSC states that all vacancies are filled competitively with the aim of promoting national values, fairness, non-discrimination and equality.
Last month TSC renewed ASHA for primary school teachers with various educational qualifications after outlining its plans ahead of merit-based curriculum (CBC) classes for junior secondary schools.
Primary school teachers holding PhDs, masters, bachelor’s degrees and diplomas in various academic related fields are now assured of teaching in secondary schools as TSC has made public its plan to deploy more teachers in its report.
TSC was hard-pressed to release its report on the state of preparedness ahead of the merit-based curriculum transition classes and on the upcoming double intake in 2023.
In a report titled Status Report on Teacher Preparedness for Competency Based Curriculum Implementation, tabled before the Parliamentary Committee on Education, TSC said it will deploy P1 teachers who are pursuing diploma, higher diploma, undergraduate degree, postgraduate diploma, PhD to teach in Masters and Junior Secondary Schools (JSS).
This is good news for primary school teachers who have academic certificates that seemed obsolete after the phasing out of service schemes and the introduction of Career Progression Guidelines (CPG).
The Ministry of Education is currently working to upgrade selected primary schools to junior secondary schools. TSC begins the deployment process for 1,000 P1 graduate teachers across counties.
Those that are under-enrolled and in close proximity will be merged and the infrastructure of one of them will improve.
In some schools both primary and junior secondary will be in the same compound.
Junior Secondary School will consist of grades 7, 8 and 9. In 2023, leading learners will transition to junior secondary school after appearing in grade six national exams under the new 2-6-3-3-3 competency-based curriculum (CBC) system. .
It is unclear whether TSC will ease its stringent guidelines for practicing P1 teachers to teach in junior secondary schools as thousands of teachers graduate in various institutions but achieve the minimum KCSE grade required by the commission to teach in secondary school. do not. .
Currently TSC only deploys P1 teachers with degree in secondary option and who have obtained at least C+ mean grade in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).
Teachers must have at least a C+ in their subjects of specialization and complete the minimum number of teaching units required for a bachelor’s degree in education.
In 2023 when grade 6 will move to grade 7 (junior secondary), it is also the year 8-4-4 learners of class six under the education system will appear in the form one after appearing in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education Examination (KCPE) , which will be presented. A huge infrastructure and staffing challenge of hosting 2.6 million children.
This has prompted TSC to act swiftly to reduce the staffing gap. It would be cheaper to promote and deploy primary school teachers to teach in junior secondary schools than to recruit new ones for TSC.
A report by the CBC task force states that the total number of students of class six and class eight attending secondary school in 2023 will be 2,571,044.
“In 2020 approximately 1,250,649 learners enrolled in Grade 4 will transfer to Junior Secondary School (Grade 7) as the first group of 2-6-3-3-3, while 1,320,395 in the standard six group 8 will transition to Form One. -4-4 system in 2023,” reads the CBC task force report.
