Promotion of Teachers By TSC: 20,000 teachers could be promoted if the Teachers Service Commission agree to recommendations by a parliamentary committee on education.
The National Assembly’s Education Committee has recommended that the government spends part of Sh. 20 billion to promote the teachers.
“As a committee, we met and agreed that TSC, Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) hold a meeting and resolve this dispute over promotion of teachers,” said the committee chairman Julius Melly (Tinderet).
According to a report that appeared in the Saturday Nation, the TSC has been allocated Sh. 251 billion in the next financial year starting July 1, an increase from the 2018/2019 budget of Sh. 225 billion.
New method TSC will use to transfer teachers
“The TSC, in its 2019-2023 strategic plan, acknowledged that thousands of teachers had stagnated in their current positions for years due to lack of funds and limited opportunities for upward mobility. The commission stated that limitations on budgetary provisions for the last five years had limited opportunities for teacher promotion, a situation it said had led to a demotivated teaching force and a high turnover in some teaching areas, creating general instability in the provision of teaching services,” the report says.
The report further says that according to TSC, during the 2015 to 2018 period, 11,177 teachers were promoted competitively through advertised posts. “These were teachers promoted from Job groups K to R, in addition to 35,887 teachers upgraded through the common cadre provision. During the period under review, the Commission, in conjunction with the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC), conducted a job evaluation exercise for the teaching service that informed the implementation of Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) with teachers’ unions,” reads the strategic plan.
It also reports as follows on the promotion of teachers by TSC: “The TSC chief executive officer, Nancy Macharia, in a memorandum says promotion is guided by merit and ability as reflected in the teachers’ work, performance and results, seniority and experience as set out in the scheme of service, existence of a vacancy, academic and professional qualification and any other criteria the commission may consider relevant.”