Over 36,000 teachers will be promoted beginning next week in a race to improve education in Junior Secondary Schools (JSS), according to their employer.
According to a schedule released yesterday, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) will also hire 450 new secondary school teachers.
TSC Chief Executive Nancy Macharia told lawmakers that of the 36,829 teachers targeted for promotion, 10,833 will be promoted to work in JSS. Promotions will begin on Monday, as the identified candidates have met the requirements for deployment.
Macharia told the National Assembly’s Education Committee that TSC is currently mapping the teachers who applied for promotion through its online platform.
Qualifications for deployment to JSS, according to the commission, include a Diploma in Education, a Bachelor’s degree in Education, at least a C +plus mean grade in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KSCE) examination or its equivalent, and at least a C Plus in the two teaching subjects at KCSE or its equivalent.
At the university level, students must have completed at least eight units in each of the two teaching subjects.
The teachers will be deployed in addition to the 30,550 primary teachers who were distributed to JSS for Grade 7 earlier this year. During that time, the commission assigned one teacher to each Grade Seven class in public schools across the country.
The move comes at a time when JSS is overcrowded due to a high number of new students, infrastructural constraints in some schools, and high fees charged by private institutions.
Macharia stated that the hiring of the 450 secondary school teachers will begin immediately after the current recruitment drive concludes.
The vacancies arose after TSC hired 35,550 teachers out of the 36,000 slots allotted to them. There were 9,000 posts on permanent and pensionable terms of service for JSS, 1,000 posts on permanent and pensionable terms of service for primary school teachers, 21,550 posts for JSS teacher interns, and 4,000 posts for primary school teacher interns.