Mixed reactions over Recruitment of teachers this month.
The recruitment of teachers by TSC has been marred by uncertainties from time to time. Stakeholders attribute this to insufficient funding from the governmental, large number of teacher graduates, while others point out a culture that is being built and propagated to deny teaching as a profession the nobility it deserves. This evident in the way gaps such as low teacher-student ratio, insufficient infrastructural resources, rising cases of indiscipline among students, among others, are being forgotten while policies like 100% transition, new curriculum and Teacher progression framework among others are formulated and implemented haphazardly to the detriment of the learners and the teacher. For this, the fate of education is always at stake.
The untold joy of joining a university or college to train as a teacher diminishes with time, ironically this joy is no more upon graduation and registration as a teacher by the employer TSC. What follows this point is depressing and confusing especially during the periodic recruitment windows. From one regime to the other, the number of teachers being employed in both internship and permanent and pensionable terms are far below those joining the job market. It is estimated that 7000 teachers graduate annually adding the number to over 350,000 trained but unemployed teachers as at 2022. The Kenya Kwanza did not give a blind eye to this challenge ion their manifesto. They have promised to employ 116,000 in two years. To walk the talk, 30000 teachers are bound to be absorbed this January under TSC as either interns or permanently employed to teach in Junior Secondary and primary level.
Like any other recruitment exercise, the graduate teachers are kept in the dark over a number of issues then asked to comply with a number of directives in phases. The employer is on record to be changing the grading scheme without public participation or policy guidance. That notwithstanding, the traditional elements of the grading scheme and key parameters like year of graduation, subject combination and many others are losing value. This has stirred an uproar among a section of teachers who are always made to believe that they have less to plan and decide as far as their fate is concerned. The inception of Junior Secondary under the new curriculum, CBC is seen as a game changer with a potential to awaken the pessimistic teachers that there is light at the end of the tunnel.