Uproar continues to pile on how the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) conducted its recruitment by awarding extra marks to intern teachers, with senators now terming the move by the teachers’ employer ‘skewed and irregular.’
The commission enrolled 6,000 teachers on the internship programme in January as it targets to solve the issue of teachers shortage in the country which even worsened by the government policy of 100 per cent transition from primary school to secondary.
In the just-concluded recruitment exercise, interns were granted an upper hand after TSC awarded them up to 30 marks over their competitors. According to senators, the move will be detrimental to thousands of unemployed teachers, some of whom have been attending TSC interviews for up to 10 years.
They now want the Education ministry and TSC to explain the rationale behind the irregularity move that is likely to condemn the employed lot to more misery.
“The TSC should through the House Committee on Education state the rationale that they used in awarding 30 points to the teachers on internship,” Bomet Senator Christopher Langat said.
Langat said the decision to grant interns extra marks was very disadvantageous to teachers who graduated long ago and are ageing, with some even exceeding 46 years of age.
The legislator seeks an answer from TSC to explain its plan for the unemployed teachers who graduated as early as 2007.
“TSC should explain why other academic qualifications such Social Education, Diploma in Education or Degree in Education were not merited as an added advantage when they were recruiting P1 teachers,” the senator demanded.
The former chairman of the Senate Education Committee, distrusted why the commission rejected competitors with a Bachelor of Education degree (B.Ed), rendering their academic qualifications underutilised human resources in Kenya.
“These people have been disadvantaged for the last 10 years,” he said. The senate will be expecting TSC to disclose to them the distribution of the teachers’ recruited by the county.
Secondary school principals opposed the resolution to hire interns to fill the gap of teachers’ shortage last year and Willy Kariuki who is the Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association (KESSHA) secretary contends that the move by TSC is likely to cause discomfort, hence poor service delivery.
Primary school interns get a monthly stipend of Ksh15, 000 while their colleagues in secondary cash in Ksh20, 000.
“If they are going to be paid less than teachers who are already qualified there is going to be discontent. They will be sympathized with by teachers who are under TSC. There will be a lot of discomfort and it will be projected to the students,” Kariuki had said.
In December 2020, the commission’s Chief Executive Officer Dr Nancy Macharia stated to MPs that the internship programme was a short-term solution to teachers’ shortage in the country.
At the same time, it emerged that about 317,000 trained and qualified teachers were still unemployed by the commission even as thousands of promising teachers graduate yearly.
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