Unemployed P1 Teachers To Join TTC In September For One Year Induction

Unemployed P1 teachers will, from September this year join Teacher Training College (TTC) for a one-year Diploma course that will put them at standard with changes made by the new curriculum.

Reliable sources from the Ministry of Education say plans are underway to advertise upgrade programmes any time between June and July this year. Interested persons who will apply will then be placed in various government Teacher Training Colleges.

The nine-month training will guarantee a pass for those willing to upgrade as from September 2021 as the programme will not be a strict regular exam-oriented course but an induction.

The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) is currently working on the curriculum design for the upgrade programme which will particularly focus on equipping teachers with skills on Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) considering that they have already acquired the basic teaching pedagogies.

The decision was arrived at after it emerged that teachers in future must have a diploma in order to be employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).

However, the teachers’ employer said the changes it is proposing in the teaching profession will not be instantaneous as they are still at the discussion level.

“Even if changes may come, they will be gradual. For now the issue is at debate level. No final word yet,” said TSC on Facebook after questioning.

The Programme-Based Budget 2021 plan reveals that TSC will hire 15,000 secondary school teachers at the beginning of this financial year. TSC said it will employ at least 5,000 teachers yearly in the next 3 years to curb the looming crisis in secondary schools.

On contrary the commission stated that it has no plans of recruiting primary school teachers, throwing into uncertainty the fate of many unemployed Primary Teacher Education (PTE) certificate holders.

TSC attributed this to the phasing out of the 8-4-4 system which is expected to reduce the workload considering that learners will move to secondary school after Grade 6 under CBC.

Primary school teachers will be hired through replacements after serving as interns for a year. However, only 2,000 interns will be employed for primary schools each year.

About 300,000 p1 teachers remain unemployed despite the commission being allocated Sh281.7 billion for the 2021/22 financial year, an increase from Sh266 billion it got in the last financial year.

During a high-level consultative meeting in Machakos TTC in early May this year which was attended by Principals of Teacher Training Colleges, top Ministry officials, and other Stakeholders, it emerged only 1400 applicants were qualified to join Diploma in Primary Teacher Education (DPTE) and Early Childhood Development Education (DECDE) in June this year, and who were posted to six different Public Teacher Training Colleges.

These were distributed to Machakos TTC in Machakos, Shanzu TTC in Mombasa, Thogoto TTC in Kiambu, Baringo TTC in Baringo, Egoji TTC in Meru and Migori TTC in Migori and they are set to join starting the 2nd of June this year.

The remaining TTCs will wait longer as it was agreed that they wait for individuals who will be shortlisted to join the upgrade programme to Diploma scheduled for September 2021.

The government targeted to place nearly 7, 000 students in approximately 30 Public TTCs across the Country. The stakeholders agreed to strictly stick on the 5 C’s Principle that is a Kenya Certificate of

Secondary Education (KCSE) mean grade of C (plain) with a C (plain) in Kiswahili, English, Mathematics, and Science and any Humanities subjects for those who were to be placed for Diploma in PTE.

Those applicants who did not meet the standards were immediately placed to Diploma in Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE), with applicants with disabilities being allowed to be shortlisted

with strictly a minimum entry grade of C- (Minus) and a cluster of C- (Minus) in the subjects stated above.

The duration of both programs shall be 3 years under the approved Curriculum designs. Teachers who will offer lectures services to the first cohort of diploma tutors who are now joining the 6 Public collages in June this year concluded their training between March 8 and 12.

This means that the first group of diploma teachers will purely teach the new CBC in schools. TTCs are mandates to ensure that the teacher-trainee receives proper training and professional development, which will grant them an opportunity to engage in research since the teachers will guide the teacher trainee appropriately to embrace the transformation from the Objective-Based to the CBC, which is hinged on the use of learner-centred methodologies for the realisation of expected outcomes.

CBC focuses majorly on expanding learners’ knowledge, experiences and imaginative understandings as well as the development of moral values for life-long learning, which necessitated the need to train the tutors to enable them, coach the first cohort of Diploma teachers.

Kenya Teachers College Principals Association (KTCPA) Mr Saul Baraza who is also the principal at St. Paul Kibabii Diploma Teachers Training College announced that they don’t have a problem with the requirements. He however raised concern that TTCs may not get the right numbers of students at the moment.

“We don’t have a problem on the entry requirements but the only challenge when it comes to operationalization is that it seems out there, there are few candidates with those grades as of now because, when students finish Form Four some of them don’t stay at home for a long time especially those who have done well in Mathematics and Sciences,” said Baraza.

Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Bomet branch Executive Secretary Malel Lang’at supported the decision of allowing the P1 teachers to upgrade to Diploma stating that it will solve the College’s puzzle of being closed due to lack of enough students.

He urged the government to adequately fund the teachers’ upgrade programme since some of them graduated a long time ago and have families while some have been employed by some private

and public schools with little payments which can’t support them in the upgrade programme.

“Since a number of them are employed in some private and public schools earning peanuts literally they don’t have money, while some have families they may not even have money to sponsor themselves; so we urge the government to give them some sponsorship and even include them to Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) programme,” said Malel.

The Government had suspended the training of primary teachers for nearly two years to phase out P1 certificate courses in TTCs and allow time for the development of curriculum to teach the new diploma course.

The move was intended to replace P1 with a diploma course, to ensure teachers are trained per the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) needs.

According to the CBC task force, Pre-Service Competency-Based Teacher Education (CBTE) will provide the education sector with a valuable opportunity to train teachers on the CBC approach.

For effective implementation of the curriculum, the Taskforce advised that the Education the ministry ensures all teachers in pre-service teacher education training colleges are inducted on effective interpretation and implementation of the teacher education curriculum framework and designs.

TSC is currently training primary school teachers on the new curriculum. Last week about 90,000 teachers were trained for five days on Competency-Based Curriculum .

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK