TSC Starts TPD Day Initiative For Teachers In Mombasa County
Mombasa County has put in place meetings to educate teachers about Teacher Professional Development (TPD) and Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has said.
During the weekly "TPD Day," the county seeks to educate teachers about the TPD program, which is intended to provide continuous updating of a teacher's professional knowledge and improvement of personal competency throughout their career.
The County has designated Wednesday as TPD day, allowing primary school teachers to be trained in Competency-Based Assessment (CBA). The training begins at 3 p.m. and lasts for two hours.
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Teachers in the same zone have been assigned to clusters based on the recommendations of their Curriculum Support Officers. TSC Mombasa County Director, Dr Samuel Marigat, told Mwalimu News that the initiative arose from the realization that by next year, CBC will have reached Grade 6, and teachers who are not CBC compliant will be out of touch.
“We realised that we needed to complement government’s initiative of training all teachers,” he said.
He claimed that the County had a sufficient number of well-trained CBC champions and materials developed by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD).
The clusters and sessions are led by CBC-compliant lead champions and teachers. Each cluster has about thirty teachers to ensure that Covid-19 protocols are followed. Officers from the TSC and the Ministry of Education keep an eye on the program.
“Monitoring tools for attendance, reporting and evaluation of each session have been developed for effective feedback,” Dr Marigat said. “The initial reaction from the teachers was amazing; teachers really enjoyed themselves,” he added. Dr Marigat said: “Our slogan is Leaving No Teacher Behind.”
A group of teachers have opposed the planned mandatory professional development training that will enable teachers to renew their certificates every five years.
The group that represents teachers from all the 47 counties say the directive by the teacher's employer is null and void. The teachers representative want any in-service training course for teachers be met by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
"Ksh. 6000 imposed on teachers for training every year is illegal and out of context. Part four of the act provides for parliamentary scrutiny of the statutory instruments, and section 22 of the act provides that every statutory instrument shall be published in the Kenya gazette.
All these were ignored by the teachers' service commission, parliament was never accorded the opportunity to scrutinize the teacher proficiency development program neither was it published in the Kenya Gazette as is required by law.
So every instrument such as this one the teacher professional development (TPD) program in the instant case must be guided by regulations, approved by parliament.
For unexplained reasons teachers, service commission ignored this process hence there was no regulation, rendering the entire exercise null and void.
TSC launched the TPD programme on September 22nd, a new module that will see public school teachers renew their professional certificates every 5 years.
The petitioner claims that the TSC imposed the program by incorporating it into the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), but failed to engage in the required public participation.
At the same time, the petitioner has raised concerns about TSC's decision to base teacher promotions on mandatory professional courses and to impose additional educational requirements for their continued employment despite having completed the required educational requirements.
“Seeking to impose a compulsory teacher that shall run for 30 days yet numerous teachers are quite old and cannot compete in the aforesaid training while still in service thus excluding them from any further promotion,” the 13-paged petition read.
The petitioner has also filed a lawsuit against Kenyatta University, Riara University, Mount Kenya University, and the Kenya Education Management Institute (KEMI), which were chosen by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to train teachers.
The Education Consultant raised concerns about the tendering process for awarding the four higher learning institutions to carry out the training program.
“Arbitrarily appointing the 4th to 8th respondents as the sole providers in teachers training under Teachers Professional Development Programme (TPD) and without engaging in open and transparent training programme as required by the law,” the court papers read.
The petitioner also opposes the proposal to have teachers pay for in-service training, arguing that the TSC should bear the cost.
TSC Chief Executive Nancy Macharia stated during the training program's launch that the TPD is a life-long learning program organized in six-tiered competency levels, with each level taking five years to complete.
This means that over the course of a 30-year teaching career, each teacher will be required to take a total of five modules, which will cost around Sh180,000.
A labor court halted the implementation of professional development training programs that would determine teacher promotion in 2019. The court ruled that the TPD program was not valid for implementation because there was no regulation promulgated by TSC to guide the programs.
In addition, in 2016, the Commission implemented Performance Contracting for Institutional Heads and Teacher Performance Appraisal and Development (TPAD) for teachers, with the goal of strengthening curriculum implementation and accountability in resource utilization in order to improve learning outcomes.
Teacher unions had previously urged the employer to recall the performance appraisal tools, stating that the exercise had caused anxiety among teachers. The Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) has already rejected the TPD module.
Nairobi County Branch executive secretary said there is a need for social dialogue in KUPPET to interrogate some areas of law policy and regulations that make a teacher's work environment hostile such as section 42 of the code of regulation for teachers.
The code talks about mandatory TPD but does not address payment. Other sections that need to be interrogated according to Mboara includes section 47, 237 and 3 which gives TSC the mandate to regulate teaching as a profession.
He said the Nairobi Kuppet Branch shall seek clear interpretation on how this shall be done but that and even consider presenting a petition to parliament to have section 47 of the TSC act repealed or amended.
"We can also have the code of regulations for teachers section 42 amended, we can also marshal the support of members of parliament to enable section 237 of the constitution to be amended if it doesn't require a referendum." Said Mbora during the interview.
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