Support TSC's efforts to avert industrial action

TSC chairperson Dr Lydia Nzomo.

NAIROBI: The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has finally gone beyond the talking stage into action. TSC has from today launched a one-week monitoring of public schools.

All the commissioners have been assigned regions where they will carry out the exercise in conjunction with other education stakeholders to chart the way forward after identifying problems unique to each region. The exercise aims at pushing for quality education through the signing of performance contracts and appraisals for teachers.

Incidences of teacher absenteeism, lack of lesson planning and poor managerial skills by those in charge of schools have impacted negatively on the quality of education being offered in our public schools.

Yet despite all this, teachers' unions, the Kenya National Union of Teachers and the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers, have been opposed to teachers signing performance contracts. This attitude is defeatist as it flies in the face of noble efforts to reform the education sector and get it out of the slump it fell into years back.

Effective controls and commitments are necessary in reforming education. These controls have been used elsewhere to great advantage. The teachers unions should therefore give this exercise their support by moving away from their confrontational stand every time change is desired.