Teachers Service Commission CEO Nancy Macharia. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]
Promotions interviews for 36,505 teachers who have stagnated in one job group will start next month, Teacher Service Commission (TSC) Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia has said.
Dr Macharia called on the teachers to apply for promotions, saying interviews will start on December 4. She regretted that in the past the exercise attracted few applicants.
Addressing the Kenya Primary School Head Teachers Association (Kepsha) annual conference in Mombasa on Thursday, the TSC boss said 17,914 out of the 36,505 teachers to be promoted are those teaching in primary school. She said some teachers had stagnated in one job group for ten years.
“In the past, the Commission failed to attract enough applicants for promotions even after lowering the requirements. I urge you to apply because we have Sh1 billion for this exercise,” she said.
Macharia asked the teachers not to shy away from being given more responsibility.
She said 1,123 vacancies for teachers advertised in Coast, Rift Valley, North Eastern, Eastern, and Central are yet to attract applicants despite staggering numbers of unemployed teachers.
Macharia advised unemployed teachers to shun the tendency to seek jobs in their counties.
“I urge all unemployed teachers to apply for advertised jobs in any part of the country and shun the practice of only seeking jobs advertised in their home counties,” she said.
The TSC boss noted that in Rift Valley, 45 slots out of the 17,393 advertised have not been filled. The open slots are in Kajiado (5), Samburu (9), and Turkana (31) counties. TSC had advertised for 17, 393 vacancies.
In North Eastern, TSC advertised 2,126 vacancies, but 795 vacancies have not been filled. ” In Garisa there are 199 vacancies, Mandera 385 and Wajir 211 vacant positions,” she said.
Macharia said TSC advertised for 10,614 slots, and it has recruited 10,542, leaving a balance of 72. In Isiolo, eight slots remain vacant, and Marsabit 64.
She further noted that at the Coast, the TSC advertised for 4,607 vacancies but in Kwale county, 39 vacancies have not been filled, Lamu has 46 vacancies, and Tana River needs 92 more teachers.
In the Central region, Macharia wondered why 25 vacancies in Murang’a and nine in Nyeri are yet to be filled.
“In Central, 6,007 posts were advertised but at the end of the exercise, 34 slots remain unfilled. Murang’a has 25 vacancies and Nyeri 9 vacancies,” she said.
Macharia did not indicate which subjects were most affected by the vacancies.
Headteachers interviewed Thursday said most teachers shy away from working in parts of Rift Valley and North Eastern because of insecurity. All vacancies advertised for Nyanza and Nairobi have been filled.
The TSC boss thanked the government for allocating the commission funds to recruit 56,000 teachers in one year, most of whom will be deployed in Junior Secondary Schools.
Macharia said TSC was retooling the teachers to embrace the ongoing reforms in the education sector.
“I am happy to report that as part of embracing these reforms. TSC, through a multi-agency approach, has been able to retool 229,292 primary school teachers. In addition, last month, we completed the training of 56,928 teachers, including 48,550 newly recruited Junior School teachers and 8,378 teachers who were deployed from primary to Junior Secondary schools,” she said
She noted that TSC was an Information Technology IT complaint and that is why the recruitment of the teachers was easy, as they no longer travel to county offices or secondary schools to drop their application.
“The online recruitment model has promoted accountability, and fairness is faster, cost-effective and convenient, besides eliminating paperwork,” she said.
She announced that the processing of teachers’ pay slips was now automated. “So far, we have automated process focus on leave, recruitment, transfer pension claims processing and tracking, discipline, appraisal, training and development, and benefits and promotion,” she said.
Macharia told the head teachers that since they had managed to navigate the CBC system to Grade 8, she was convinced that they were qualified to be principals of comprehensive school, which is a combination of primary and Junior Secondary School.