The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has rejected demands made by teacher unions regarding a list it published on its website containing TSC numbers of teachers it claimed to have promoted.
Both the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) want TSC to make public names of teachers it promoted.
Knut had made a formal request to have guidelines for the interviews administered to teachers in December 2023 and January 2024 made public.
Knut feels the teachers’ employer is not giving full details about the promoted teachers. The union is questioning why the commission is unwilling to provide real names against the TSC numbers published for audit purposes.
The union feels that without the real names of successful candidates against their TSC numbers, even dead teachers could make it to the merit list.
There is hue and cry over why the employer doesn’t want, or is unwilling to publish the names of successful candidates for audit purposes.
The lists have also shown very old TSC numbers and some extremely recent, leading to suspicion.
So far there are numerous evidence of teachers who were left behind but appear to be more qualified than those in the list.
The Commission has maintained that only those in the list will be issued with promotion letters.
Already a number of counties which were issued with the softcopy of the letters have started to print and issue to the owners.
TSC published a list of 724 pages on its website containing only TSC numbers of 36,505 who were successfully promoted following interviews done in December and January.
All the 36,505 successful teachers will be issued with promotional letters and will be required to submit five Chapter six documents.
Below are the five documents that are mandatory inline with Chapter six of the Kenyan Constitution on ‘Leadership and Integrity’.
- Valid Certificate of Good Conduct from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) cost 1,050/-
- Clearance Certificate from the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) cost Free
- Tax Compliance Certificate from Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) cost Free
- Clearance from Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) cost Free
- A Clearance Certificate from an approved Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) cost 2,200/-
TSC has hinted that those pormoted to deputy and headteacher positions will be posted outside their current sub-counties.
Those promoted to be senior teachers are more likely to serve within schools with vacancies in their current sub-counties.
However those promoted through confirmation will serve in schools where they have been acting for years.
The unsuccessful teachers will be issued with regret letters which will serve as evidence of their interview attendance.
TSC conducted interviews in December and January after advertising the vacancies in September last year. At least one hundred and fifty thousand teachers were shortlisted for interviews.
The promotion interviews for primary school teachers were done from 4th to 15th December 2023.
Secondary school teachers and Teacher Training College (TTC) tutors had their interviews running from 3rd to 16th January 2024.