The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has released official figures of its staff who have attained higher qualifications by October last year.
A total of 54,702 teachers have upgraded their education and acquired new academic papers since last year.
A report tabled in Parliament last week by TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia reveals that a total of 36,341 P1 (primary school) teachers have pursued diploma, higher diploma, degrees, masters, post-graduate and doctorate qualifications by October last year.
Broken down, TSC report says that 18,076 of these teachers have attained degrees.
Another 17,758 have acquired higher diploma qualifications, with some 486 attaining masters papers.Only five teachers have attained doctorate qualifications.
“This is the summary of different cadre of academic qualifications attained as per October 31, 2018,” reads the TSC report.
And for secondary school teachers, the TSC report reveals that a total of 1,650 have attained higher diploma and masters qualifications.
Of these, 1,635 teachers have attained masters with some 11 postgraduate diploma and four doctoral qualifications.
However, according to TSC, only 16,711 primary school teachers have submitted their higher academic qualifications between January 2014 and July 2017.Of these, 8,499 pursued diploma and 8,212 attained degrees papers.
“The commission has so far acknowledged the submissions of credentials,” reads the TSC report.
Macharia told the National Assembly Education Committee that she will call for applications for promotions this week.
Promotions of teachers who have attained higher qualifications have been a sticky point between TSC and Knut.
A Ministry of Labour conciliation report released recently between Knut and TSC revealed that 11,950 teachers have not been promoted.
The matter is now subject of a court process.According to the report, Knut said 30,000 teachers who had advanced their education to get better pay or promotion had been waiting for the last four years to be elevated.
The seven-member conciliation committee heard that the last time teachers were promoted was in 2014.
“Some teachers are due to retire after serving in the same grade for 15 years, despite excelling in their careers and having clean records of service delivery,” said Knut.
Knut said TSC went against the 2016-2021 CBA to introduce new regulations on promotions.
The union said TSC should have used the existing scheme of service that detailed career progression for non-graduate teachers, graduate teachers, technical teachers and lecturers.
“The career progression guidelines were introduced by TSC without consultation, which in essence replaced academic qualifications, thereby denying teachers promotion. These guidelines are not recognised and provided for in the code of regulations of teachers,” Knut said.
TSC argued that it could not promote its employees based on academic papers only. “Promotions cannot be based on higher qualifications only, as that criteria contravenes the CBA,” TSC said.
It says the old approach to promotions ended when they signed the July 1, 2017 CBA.It also claimed that the CBA automatically promoted many teachers, beyond the projected number.