Ministry stops listing of new schools over teacher crisis

Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed

Registration of new schools will be pegged on the number of teachers available, the Education ministry has announced.

Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed said this was meant to manage the current shortage of teachers in public schools.

Currently, there are about 30,000 public learning institutions, 23,000 of which are primary schools. All the institutions share 312,060 teachers employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).

The chairperson of TSC, Lydia Nzomo, said there were more than 700,000 teachers in the country.

Amina said institutions should share resources and added that the Government was committed to enabling the TSC to handle the challenge of teacher shortage.

“The Government attaches a lot of importance to the teaching profession. That is why 25 per cent of the national budget is allocated to education, and a significant portion is directly utilised by the commission,” said Amina.

Current shortage

The CS said the Government was well aware of the current shortage of teachers, which she said continued to be a challenge.

She said the Government had provided funds to enable TSC to employ 30,000 teachers in the past five years.

“We are now looking into registration of schools, which should take into consideration availability of teachers,” said the CS.

During the Kenya Primary School Heads Association Conference in February 2018, TSC boss Nancy Macharia noted that there was a shortage of 40,792 teachers in primary and 63,849 in secondary schools.

She asked the Treasury to provide Sh16 billion to enable the commission to employ 68,000 intern teachers to address the shortage.

The shortage, she said, was occasioned by the opening of new schools following the Government directive to ensure 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary school.

The CS was speaking during the celebration of TSC's 50th anniversary in Nairobi on Friday.

The celebration was attended by TSC's top leadership as well as officials of teachers' unions, who used the occasion to agitate for the employment of more teachers.

Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) Secretary General Akello Misori said the Government needed to make available more funds to enable TSC to hire more teachers.

“We do not have enough teachers, but you also find many have to stay away from school for long due to disciplinary issues, which is not good,” he said.

Medical scheme

Mr Misori also said the teachers’ medical scheme ceases to be of importance once one retires and asked for a uniform scheme, like other public servants.

“We must make teaching attractive so as to attract the best students. Our desire is that TSC should work with Treasury to be sufficiently funded,” said Kenya National Union of Teachers Secretary General Wilson Sossion.