The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has outlined a plan to promote primary school headteachers whose schools are hosting junior secondary schools starting next year.
In its plan the Commission also seeks to have a total of 400,000 teachers to serve in primary and junior school section which will be known as comprehensive schools.
TSC will also promote the current deputy headteachers in those schools to serve as deputy principals under the new arrangement that will see the institutions being run by two deputies.
The principals and deputies will be required to be graduates possessing a bachelors degree in any field in education.
However the current headteachers and deputies will be required to have at least a diploma for them to be promoted to principal and deputy principal status.
The headteachers and deputies will handle lessons in junior school which is grappling with shortage of teachers.
The headteachers will be moved from their current job groups to the next. Those in job group C5 will be promoted to job group D1 while the senior headteachers in job group D1 will be moved to job group D2.
Their promotion will be progressive till they attain job group D5 just like the principals of secondary schools and teacher training colleges (TTC’s).
TSC already requested additional data, through an excel template, for the headteachers and their deputies for commencement of the exercise.
The principal will be a signatory to all school bank accounts from pre-primary, primary and junior school (comprehensive school).
This financial year the Commission is planning to promote 12,000 teachers in the 2024 – 2025 financial year where 9,000 posts will go to primary and junior and 3,000 posts to secondary schools.
Last month TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia said that a total of 36,504 teachers were promoted during the 2023 – 2024 financial year.
This she said has brought the number of teachers promoted over the last five years to 71,212.
Macharia said the government has allocated sh 1 billion for promotion of more teachers in the 2024 – 2025 financial year.
Currently TSC has around 223,296 teachers in primary schools and plans to have a total of 120,923 teachers in junior secondary.
Currently the number of teachers in both primary and secondary schools stands at 347,000 teachers.