Community Classes in Kenya: The Ministry of Education has announced that teachers who don’t take part in the community learning program will not receive their salaries.

According to the Education CAS Zack Kinuthia, teachers who fail to register for the program or miss the classes will be considered to have absconded and won’t get paid. He however said community learning will not replace the main curricculum. “The government does not want to see children lying idle,” he said in Kilifi.

By last week, the Teachers Service Commission had registered over 224,494 teachers for the upcoming community learning programme. The registered teachers make up 67 per cent of the 337,432 teachers who are employed by the TSC.

The TSC has been requiring teachers to register with education officials within their locality to facilitate planning of face-to-face lessons.

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The programme targets more than 10 million learners in public schools that are not offering virtual lessons like most private academies. The children have been home since March when schools were shut to contain the spread of Covid-19.

The learning programme has drawn support from the two main teachers’ unions, Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) and the Kenya National Union of Teachers. However, KUPPET has raised opposition against an idea for the provision of risk allowance that was pitched by KNUT.

The programme, according to the TSC, will involve classes of 15 children.

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During the face-to-face lessons, teachers will be required to engage learners on life skills and values such as weeding, cultivating, grazing animals, storytelling, planting, debating life issues and hygiene, among others.

Tutors will also be required to offer guidance, counselling and psychosocial support as guided by the code of regulations for teachers. In addition to these, teachers may also provide learning activities in reading and numeracy and other subjects of interest to learners to keep them engaged.

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Grading of learners will also be permitted, as teachers will be required to adopt group work with emphasis on peer-to-peer learning. “The teachers should use discussion groups during learning and even grading can be done among peers,” reads a TSC draft guideline document. Community Classes in Kenya.