Yesterday The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) officially rolled out the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) programme at CEMASTEA, Karen, Nairobi.
TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Njeri Macharia said the TPDs are part of Performance Management and Evaluation programme which teachers unions agreed in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) 2021 – 2025.
“In compliance with Regulation 48 (1) of the CORT and with a view to enhance and maintain high performance standards in the teaching service, the Commission shall implement continuous the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) Programmes and Performance Management system in the teaching service,” said Nancy Macharia in a circular 14/2021.
TSC signed a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT), Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) and Kenya Union of Special Needs Education Teachers (KUSNET) on 13th July 2021.
The CBAs were registered by the Employment and Labour Relations Court on 27th August, 2021 as required under Section 60 of the Labour Relations Act.
According to Nancy Macharia every teacher who successfully completes the TPD programme shall be issued with a Teaching Certificate contemplated under Regulation 49 (1) of the CORT.
Teachers will also be required to regularly update their TPAD2 which will capture the TPD modules and chapters they have undertaken.
Each of the 340,000 teachers will undertake the professional courses that will inform their promotion and professional growth.
The teachers will also be required to renew their teaching certificate every five years, and only if they regularly take the courses.
“We had a very hard time in negotiating for teachers because when you are at the negotiations table they reffered to teachers as unskilled or semi-skilled. We need to see our teachers conduct reseach projects and write academic and acclaimed research papers to improve the quality in schools,” said Nancy Macharia.
According to the contract document each module will be taken every five years and each teacher will pay ksh 6,000 every year for the TPD refresher courses.
This means that for an entire teaching career, each teacher will be required to take a total of five modules within a span of 30 years, translating to about Sh180,000.
Macharia said the plan is to professionalize teaching fraternity to match other careers like Law and Engineering.
She asked teachers to embrace the programme and that she will launch awareness campaign to make sure teachers understand it.
“I beseech our teachers to embrace the TPD programme as it is certainly going to be a gamechanger. We will engage in robust communication and awareness campaigns to ensure that this programme is well understood and ends up benefiting the teacher in line with its objectives,” she said yesterday.
There are six TPD modules each teacher will have to undertake during their career and each will take five years to complete.
Macharia said all teachers in public and private schools would be required to undertake the mandatory Teacher Professional Development (TPD) courses during the school holidays at their own cost.
Kenyatta University, Riara University, Mount Kenya University and the Kenya Education Management Institute (Kemi) were picked by TSC to train the teachers.
“At the end of each module, successful teachers will have their teaching certificates renewed after every five years,” said Macharia.
This means that those who will not have taken the refresher courses will not be granted teaching licence and may not be authorised to teach.
Dr Macharia, said the overall objective of the TPD programme is to continuously develop teachers’ skills and knowledge in line with the 21st-century core competencies.
She also said the refresher courses will boost the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) roll out as teachers will be equipped with requisite skills.
Details show that each classroom teacher, primary school head teachers, or high school principals and their deputies will be required to undertake at least one module per year.
Classroom teachers will take up modules separate from the senior teachers, mostly institutional leaders and senior staff.
Modules for teachers will include professionalism, pedagogy, Competency-Based Curriculum and Assessment, inclusive education practices, comprehensive school health and safety, instructional leadership, and financial literacy skills.
And for institutional leaders, the modules will include professionalism, Competency-Based Curriculum and Assessment, leadership in high-quality instruction and assessment, professional learning environment, building a positive inclusive learning environment, comprehensive school health, and financial literacy skills.
The modules have been organised into chapters’ which will be taken by teachers every year.
The contract document defines a chapter as a critical area of knowledge and skills in a module that informs the development of learning units. Each chapter will be taken every year and will cost Sh6,000.
“The service provider will charge an annual training fee of Sh6,000 only per teacher which will be inclusive of all training sessions, assessment, reporting and all other associated costs incurred in carrying out the described service,” reads the document.
The fee will be paid by teachers even as unions said the matter should be revisited and cost shouldered by the employer.
“This cost needs to be relooked at and even made cheaper,” said Akello Misori, the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers secretary general.
The courses shall be modular-based training programmes for all practising teachers and will adopt online and in-person approach.