Teachers Leaving the Profession: Nearly 10,000 teachers will leave the profession by December this year. This has been revealed by the Teachers Service Commission.

According to the commission, some 7,908 teachers are set to retire by December 31 this year after attaining the mandatory retirement age of 60.

TSC) Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia, however, says that the commission has put in place mechanisms to ensure the retiring teachers are promptly replaced.

“To mitigate shortage, the commission formulated a policy that ensures wherever teachers exit service on natural attrition, for instance retirement or death in service among other reasons, the vacant positions are promptly advertised and competitively filled within a month,” Macharia said. Strikingly, the number of vacancies that have been announced by TSC for replacement are far shorter than the current replacement number and the expected replacement vacancies due in December.

Macharia, though, did not reveal if the TSC shall announce a fresh round of vacancies to fill in the replacements early next year. Currently, there are about 312,000 teachers registered with TSC but still not employed. 300,000 of these teachers applied for the 11,000 vacancies that were announced by the TSC in September. The total number of employed teachers currently stands at 337,432.

Teachers say no to TSC new pay raise proposal

Last week, Macharia told the Senate Education Committee that in determining the teacher shortage, the commission is guided by staffing norms as opposed to teacher-learner ratio. To address understaffing, Macharia said the commission has consistently requested for increased budgetary provisions to employ 20,000 annually.

“This has not borne much fruit as the National Assembly appropriates Sh. 2.5 billion annually for recruitment of 5,000 teachers,” said Macharia. Teachers Leaving the Profession.