The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has issued a blow message that affects both employed and unemployed teachers.
At the same time the Commission has ordered for immediate submission of names of all public school teachers who underwent Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) training since year 2019.
In a message seen by Teachers Arena, school heads are required to send the name, school, TSC number, mobile number, email address and year and month the teacher took the training.
Last month TSC said training of primary school teachers who will handle Grade Six pupils will be done in December 2021.
The Commission CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia said at least 60,000 high school teachers will, in March and April next year, be trained in preparation for the rollout of junior secondary.
Junior secondary school will comprise of Grades 7, 8 and 9. In 2023, pioneer learners under the new 2-6-3-3-3 CBC system will transition to junior secondary school after sitting the Grade Six national examinations.
Already piloting exercise for Grade six happened last term. The piloting involved 210 schools.
The piloting exercise for Grade 6 was done using the current Grade 5 learners.
TSC has also maintained that all unemployed p1 teachers will have to undergo the Diploma upgrading programme before they are considered for employment.
The Commission has also said that teachers in its payroll must go through the Teacher Professional Development modules.
TSC asked the over 300,000 unemployed teachers to go through the ongoing Diploma upgrading programme in order to be CBC compliant.
Speaking recently TSC Director for Quality Assurance and Standards, Dr. Reuben Nthamburi, said though employment for those who will upgrade to Diploma Primary Teacher Education (DPTE) will not be automatic there chances will be enhanced.
Dr. Nthamburi who was representing the Commission’s Chief Executive Officer Dr. Nancy Macharia, was addressing the Senators of the Senate Committee on Education chaired by Dr. Alice Milgo and Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) on CBC sensitization in Naivasha recently, said the unemployed teachers who will graduate after nine months of training will be at par with those who will graduate with DPTE, and so help the Commission to effectively deal with their salaries and motivation.
“As a Commission as indicated, when we post a teacher now who is not CBC compliant, we have a lot of cases that are coming up because the teacher is not able to teach Grade 1 to 5 because is not CBC compliant. So what has been decided is that these teachers who are out there they need to go through this training,” said Dr. Nthamburi.
CALENDAR FOR DIPLOMA UPGRADING STUDENTS
| Term | Opening | Closing | Duration |
| Term 1 | 4th October 2021 | 23rd December 2021 | 12 weeks |
| Holiday | 23rd December 2021 | 3rd January 2022 | 1 week |
| Term 2 | 3rd January 2022 | 8th April 2022 | 14 weeks |
| Holiday | 8th April 2022 | 29th April 2022 | 3 weeks |
| Term 3 | 3rd May 2022 | 5th August 2022 | 14 weeks |
| Holiday | 6th August 2022 | 25th September 2022 | 7 weeks |
| Term 4 | 26th September 2022 | 25th November 2022 | 9 week practicum |
The upgrading programme shall take 4 terms for DPTE (Diploma Primary Teacher Education) and 5 terms for DECTE (Diploma Early Childhood Teacher Education). Both will have course work and a full term for practicum.
Graduates for the Upgrading Programmes shall be expected to teach all the subjects offered in the area of training.
The total number of the content and pedagogical hours in the Upgrading Programmes will be 786 hours for DPTE and 1176 hours for DECTE.
For ECDE upgrading, they will do all the learning areas in DECTE with more hours than in PTE upgrading but will both have a teaching practicum of 300 hours.
However P1 teachers will only study the subjects which they didn’t do in college.
“The CBTEC expects a primary school teacher to be grounded in all the subjects offered in primary schools, therefore upgrading PTE teacher trainee will be exempted from the subjects they had specialised in and take only those they did not take in the certificate course,” reads a taskforce report.
Dr. Nthamburi clarified that the upgrade programme is completely different with the recently rolled out Teacher Professional Development (TPD).
At the same time the Commission has maintained that its over 340,000 teachers on payroll should enroll for the mandatory TPD programme.
TPD Service Providers have continued to advertise for the programme, wooing teachers to register.
“Six reasons to enrol at MKU for Teacher Professional Development, visit https://www.mku.ac.ke/tpd Download MKU TPD app from Play store to register. Thank you,” read a message sent to teachers by Mount Kenya University.
The programme faces numerous bottlenecks with most resistance coming from teachers.
Recently a judge of the Employment and Labour Relations Court declined to suspend the implementation of the TPD Programme.
Judge David Nderitu noted that the issues raised in the petition were weighty. Unless the case is heard and concluded Nderitu said TSC can proceed with the programme.
Joseph Ngethe Karanja filed a petition challenging the TPD program. In a petition filed at the High Court in Nakuru, Ngethe sued the TSC, Education Cabinet Secretary, Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers, Kenya National Union of Teachers, Kenyatta University, Mt Kenya University, Riara University and Kenya Education Management Institute.
Ngethe, in the suit, argues that the decision to have teachers undergo mandatory refresher training violates their rights.
“Teachers and education stakeholders were not engaged by TSC in the development of the content of the module to be undertaken in the professional development programme,” says Ngethe in the petition.
Over 40 Kuppet branch secretaries also made a declaration rejecting the training program which TSC said will take 30 years.
The modules which are five in number will cost shs. 6,000 yearly. The modules are divided into chapters that teachers will study during their career life. Teachers will pay for the training.
Kenyatta University, Riara University, Mount Kenya University and the Kenya Education Management Institute (Kemi) were picked by TSC to train the teachers.