Thousands of unemployed and employed P1 and ECDE teachers will this year expected to start training for Diploma course that will put them at par with changes brought by the new curriculum.
This is after the Ministry of Education released a circular yesterday to guide on the process of launching the upgrade course.
“The meeting held on 15 July, 2021 at Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) chaired by the Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) and attended by a representative of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), KICD and the Ministry discussed the upgrade program for teachers. The Ministry is now in the process of advertising the upgrading Diploma program for year 2021 as stated,” said Principal Secretary Julius Juan in a circular dated 22nd July 2021.
All teachers in service with Teacher Service Commission (TSC), County Governments and Private Schools will be expected to start the blended upgrade program when the school calendar normalizes having been disrupted by COVID-19 Pandemic, the Ministry official said.
However it is still not yet clear on how the training will be carried out and the time that it will take for teachers to train.
Below is the circular my Ministry of Education for the upcoming upgrade course.
TO: Regional Directors of Education
County Directors of Education
Sub-County Directors of Education
RE: UPGRADE DIPLOMA PROGRAMME FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD TEACHER EDUCATION (ECTE) AND PRIMARY TEACHER EDUCATION (PTE) FOR YEAR 2021
The meeting held on 15 July, 2021 at Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) chaired by the Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) and attended by a representative of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), KICD and the Ministry discussed the upgrade program for teachers.
The Ministry is now in the process of advertising the upgrading Diploma program for year 2021 as stated above.
The upgrade Diploma program due for advertisement will be for the trained teachers who are not in service and wish to upgrade from ECDE Certificate to Diploma in Early Childhood Teacher Education (DECTE) and from Primary Teacher Education Certificate to Diploma in Primary Teacher Education (DPTE) respectively.
All teachers in service with Teacher Service Commission (TSC), County Governments and Private Schools will be expected to start the blended upgrade program when the school calendar normalizes having been disrupted by COVID 19 Pandemic.
The purpose of this letter is to request you to communicate to all Headteachers in your jurisdiction who should subsequently inform their staff.
Julius Juan
Principal Secretary
TSC promoted all P1 teachers (Job group G) to Diploma grade (job grade B5) thus phasing out the P1 job group G.
Last month sources from the Ministry of Education said plans are in top gear to advertise for the upgrade chances any time in July this year where interested persons will be allowed to apply, shortlist the applicants and place them in various government Teacher Training Colleges for the upgrade programme.
The training will take nine months with guarantee pass for those willing to upgrade starting September 2021 as this will not be a strict regular exam oriented course but an induction.
The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) has worked on the curriculum design for the upgrade programme which will only focus on equipping the teachers with Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) skills since they have already acquired the basic teaching pedagogies.
The resolution was reached after it emerged that no teacher in future will be employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to join the teaching service without a Diploma.
However the Commission said whatever changes it is planning in the teaching profession will not be instantaneous as the changes are still at debate level.
“Even if changes may come, they will be gradual. For now the issue is at debate level. No final word yet,” said TSC on Facebook after inquiry.
In the plan contained in the Programme-Based Budget 2021, TSC will employ 15,000 secondary school teachers starting this financial year.
The Commission said it will employ at least 5,000 teachers annually in the next three years to curb looming crisis in secondary schools.
On contrary TSC said it has no plans to recruit primary school tutors, throwing into uncertainty the fate of thousands of unemployed PTE certificate holders.
According to TSC Primary schools will not get new teachers as the phasing out of the 8-4-4 system is expected to reduce the workload since learners will move to secondary school after Grade Six under the competency-based curriculum (CBC).
Primary school teachers, it said, will be employed through replacements after serving as interns for a year.
TSC said it will engage the services of 6000 interns on a one-year contract this year to plug staffing gaps in schools.
However only 2,000 interns will be posted to primary schools each year.
There are currently at least 300,000 p1 teachers yet to be absorbed into TSC payroll.
TSC has been allocated Sh281.7 billion for the 2021/22 financial year, up from the Sh266 billion it got in the current year.
During a high level consultative meeting held in Machakos TTC early May this year which involved top Ministry officials, Principals of Teacher Training Colleges and other Stakeholders, it emerged only 1400 applicants qualified to join Diploma in Primary Teacher Education (DPTE) and Early Childhood Development Education (DECDE) in June this year, and who were distributed to six various Public Teacher Training Colleges.
They were distributed to Machakos TTC in Machakos, Thogoto TTC in Kiambu, Shanzu TTC in Mombasa, Egoji TTC in Meru, Baringo TTC in Baringo, and Migori TTC in Migori and they are expected to join starting 2nd June this year.
The remaining colleges will wait longer since it was agreed that they wait for those who will be shortlisted to join the upgrade programme to Diploma in September this year.
The government targeted to place about 7,000 students in about 30 Public TTCs across the Country.
The stakeholders resolved to strictly stick on the 5 C’s Principle that is a Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) mean grade of C (plain) with a C (plain) in English, Kiswahili, Mathematics, and any Humanities and Science subjects for those who were to be placed for Diploma in Primary Teacher Education.
Those applicants who failed to meet the criteria were immediately placed to Diploma in Early Childhood Development Education, with candidates with disabilities being allowed to be shortlisted with strictly minimum entry grade of C- (Minus) and a C- (Minus) in the cluster of subjects stated above.
The duration of both courses shall be three years in accordance with the approved Curriculum designs.
Tutors who will offer lectures to the first cohort of diploma teachers who joined the six Public TTCs in June this year completed their training between March 8 and 12 this year, meaning that these first group of diploma teachers will purely teach the new Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) in schools.
Under the new plan, TTCs are expected to ensure that the teacher-trainee receives appropriate training and professional development, which will accord them an opportunity to engage in research, since the tutors will guide the teacher trainee appropriately to embrace the shift from the Objective Based to the CBC, which is hinged on use of learner-centered methodologies for realisation of expected outcomes.
CBC focuses majorly on enlarging learners’ knowledge, experiences and imaginative understandings as well as the development of moral values for life-long learning, which necessitated the need to train the tutors to enable them, coach the first cohort of Diploma teachers.
Chairperson of Kenya Teachers College Principals Association (KTCPA) Saul Baraza who is also principal at St. Paul Kibabii Diploma Teachers Training College said that they don’t have a problem with the requirements though he raised concern that Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) may not get the right numbers as per the moment.
“We don’t have a problem on the entry requirements but the only challenge when it comes to operationalization is that it seems out there, there are few candidates with those grades as of now because, when students finish Form Four some of them don’t stay at home for a long time especially those who have done well in Mathematics and Sciences,” said Baraza.
Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Bomet Executive Secretary Malel Lang’at supported the resolution of allowing the P1 teachers to upgrade to Diploma since it will solve the College’s puzzle of being shut due to lack of enough students.
Malel further urged the government to fully finance the teachers upgrade programme since some of them graduated long time ago and have families while some have been employed by some private and public schools with minimal wages which can’t support them for the upgrade programme.
“Since a number of them are employed in some private and public schools earning peanuts literally they don’t have money, while some have families they may not even have money to sponsor themselves; so we urge the government to give them some sponsorship and even include them to Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) programme,” said Malel.
The Government had suspended training of primary teachers for almost two years in order to phase out P1 certificate courses in Teacher Training Colleges and allow time for development of a curriculum to teach the new diploma course.
The move was meant to replace P1 with diploma course, to ensure teachers are trained in accordance with the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) needs.
According to the CBC taskforce, Pre-Service Competency Based Teacher Education (CBTE) will provide the education sector with a valuable opportunity to train teachers on the CBC approach.
For effective implementation of the curriculum, the Taskforce recommended that the Education ministry ensures all tutors in pre-service teacher education training colleges are inducted on effective interpretation and implementation of the teacher education curriculum framework and designs.
TSC is currently training its primary school teachers on the new curriculum.
This month a total of 90,000 teachers got trained for five days on Competency Based Curriculum (CBC).