TSC Embarks On Immediate Recruitment Of 5,000 Teachers – Macharia

NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr, 23 – The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) Chief Executive Officer Dr. Nancy Macharia has said that the commission will embark on the immediate recruitment of teachers amidst a glaring shortage that threatens the sector.

In turn, the teacher’s employer will now commence the immediate competitive recruitment of at least 5,000 teachers after the national treasury in the financial year 2022/2023 allocated Sh2.5 billion for the exercise.

In total, the education sector has been allocated a whopping Sh544.4 billion, in the budget estimates presented to parliament by CS Ukuru Yattani this year.

“The commission will immediately embark on the exercise to recruit teachers to ensure they report to work as soon as possible to ease the existing teacher shortage in schools,” said Macharia.

The recruited teachers will be employed on permanent and pensionable terms.

During the impending teacher recruitment exercise, more emphasis will be geared towards staffing sub-county secondary schools which are said to admit the bulk of learners nationwide.

The institutions are mostly day secondary schools.

The TSC boss has now directed its Regional Directors to submit a comprehensive report on school staffing status by May 9, 2022.

During the exercise, some teachers will now be transferred to other schools.

TSC field officers have been conducting routine exercises of assessing their sub-counties to ensure that all schools have a balanced teacher-to-learner ratio ahead of the start of the new academic year.

With the current teacher deficit, newly recruited teachers will now be posted to areas in serious need.

The commission will also factor in the age of the teacher before the transfer.

Teachers aged 56 and above will be exempt from the exercise.

The process of staffing schools is guided by staffing norms whose key objective is to achieve the optimal utilization of teachers and in so doing, reduce disparities in teacher distribution.

“Since 2019, the government has also been allocating funds to recruit teacher interns, to date a total of 28,000 teachers have served the commission. In the financial year 2022/23 the government has allocated Sh1.2 billion to recruit 6,000 interns as a stop-gap measure to ease the teacher shortage in our school which hastened to 114,581 teachers,” said Macharia.

The irregular distribution is said to have been the cause of the imbalance in teacher staffing for years with Regional Directors now expected to work with County Directors to ensure the rationalization exercise achieves equitable redistribution.