Kenya's MPs dash hopes to hire 25,000 more teachers

The push to have more teachers hired to support the 100 percent transition has suffered a blow after MPs failed to increase the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) budget.

The report of the Budget and Appropriation Committee was adopted by the National Assembly last week, leaving TSC's request at the mercy of National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani.

Mr Yatani is required to make the 2020/2021 budget based on the recommendations of the committee that is chaired by Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichung'wah.

5,000 teachers

The committee approved the recruitment of 5,000 teachers on permanent and pensionable terms at Sh2 billion against the commission's request for Sh15.4 billion to recruit 25,000 tutors.

TSC will now have to continue with the hiring of 10,000 interns at Sh1.2 billion starting July and schools will have to rely of board of management (BoM) teachers.

According to TSC chief executive officer Nancy Macharia, the available 318,000 teachers in service are overstretched.

"Our teachers are being overworked due to competency based curriculum and 100 per cent transition," said Dr Macharia.

The 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary schools has overstretched facilities in institutions and this year one million more learners joined secondary school.

With 100 per cent transition now in its third year, TSC had proposed that 12,000 teachers be recruited annually for five years to address the gap.

Strategic plan

In its strategic plan, 2019-2023, TSC had indicated that it requires Sh82 billion to recruit teachers in the next five years and which will enable it to address biting teacher shortage in schools, currently estimated at about 100,000, a figure which is likely to rise to about 120,000 by 2023.

On average, it require Sh16.4 billion annually to recruit teachers. Presently, TSC estimates an overall teacher shortage of 96,345 - 38,054 at the primary and 58,291 at the post-primary school levels.

At the moment 80,000 teachers are hired by school's boards of management.

The committee in its report to the National Assembly observed that some of the key performance indicators and targets within the Ministry of Education were not based on the resource ceilings provided in the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) 2020.

The committee pointed out that some key areas in education have been overlooked citing the school feeding programme -- said to have been skewed towards schools in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands -- and particularly leaving out slums in the urban areas and some poverty stricken places.

Available resources

With the changing economic times, the team noted that the capitation offered to both primary and secondary school learners was quite indifferent.

"It is unfortunate that the Technical Training Institutes (TTI's) are yet to be provided with high voltage power," reads the report.

It endorsed the need for the Ministry of Education to reconcile key performance indicators with the available resources.

The committee recommended that the budget for the Village Training Centres (VTCs) be fragmented between recurrent and development budget.

"The conditional grants to VTCs should not be lumped together under the development budget since part of the grants are used for capitation," added the report.