Primary school teachers to teach junior secondary from January

Primary school teachers to teach junior secondary from January

Its windfall for primary school teachers after the announcement that all Grade 6 learners who completed their Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) on Wednesday will transition to Junior secondary schools (JSS) domiciled in the existing primary schools.

This simply means that its primary school teachers who will handle the Grade 7, 8 and 9 learners starting January 2023.

A member of the Education taskforce yesterday, after a meeting with President William Ruto, revealed that TSC was ordered to do an audit of primary school teachers who have a degree or diploma requirement to teach in junior secondary.

TSC has set a Diploma as the minimum requirement for teachers who want to teach in junior secondary section.

Some of the primary school teachers who qualify to teach in Grade 7, 8 and 9 are those with the following qualifications;

1) Diploma and Degree in Special Needs Education

2) Diploma and Degree in Early Childhood Development Education

3) Diploma and Degree in Education (Primary option)

4) Diploma in Education (Secondary option)

5) Degree in Education (Secondary option) but lacking C+ at KCSE or C+ in teaching subjects.

Teachers who with Diploma selected to teach in junior secondary will start at Job Group C1 and later moved to C2 automatically after serving for three years.

Those with Degree will start at Job Group C2 and later moved to Job Group C3 after serving for a period of three years.

However the selected teachers will have to be retooled to handle subjects taught at Grade 7, 8 and 9.

The just concluded national exam done by the pioneer Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) learners will not be used for placement to JSS but rather will be “used as an assessment to monitor learning progress and provide feedback to education sector players on areas that require intervention”.

President William Ruto said after receiving a preliminary report of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER).

The Ministry of Education (MoE) will provide the necessary guidelines on how the transition will be done.

The announcement is a relief to the 1,287,597 candidates registered for the KPSEA who went into the examination room unsure of their fate.

Another member of the PWPER revealed that the recommendations were made based on “logistical challenges rather than curriculum issues”.

President Ruto has also instructed the MoE, Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) “to work on modalities of fast-tracking retooling teachers to ensure the country has sufficient teachers who are compliant with CBC”.

To enhance the capacity of the teaching force, the President announced that the government will recruit 30,000 additional teachers by January.

Schools are scheduled to open on January 23, 2023.

However, it is not clear whether the teachers who will be recruited will be posted to primary or secondary schools.

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