TSC Reopens Online Appraisal System for Late Submissions and Countersigning
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has briefly reopened its Teacher Performance Appraisal and Development (TPAD) online system, giving teachers with incomplete appraisals a fresh chance to finish and submit them, and allowing school administrators to appraise their staff and countersign.
The reopening follows weeks of technical hitches that disrupted the portal at the most critical point of the term.
Teachers and heads across the country reported slow loading pages, failed log-ins, uploads that would not save and entries that disappeared after submission.
In many schools, a process that should have been routine turned into a frustrating cycle of repeated attempts, late-night log-ins and growing anxiety about deadlines.
For many in the profession, the reopening comes as a relief. For others, it is a narrow window that must be used wisely.
What teachers can now do
With the portal accessible again, teachers who were unable to complete their appraisals can log in and finish the outstanding sections.
These include the teaching standards, where teachers rate their performance against the framework that guides the appraisal, as well as learner progress records and attendance records.
The process remains an online one. Teachers enter scores, appraisal details and supporting evidence on the portal, and the quality of what they submit determines how smoothly the next stages unfold.
Under the revised structure, scores are required for specific learning areas rather than a single composite grade.
A teacher handling Creative Arts and Sports, for example, must submit separate evaluations for Art and Craft, Music, and Physical Education.
The change improves tracking under the Competency-Based Curriculum, but it multiplies the data fields teachers must complete. Those handling several learning areas will need extra time, and should avoid leaving the exercise until the final hours of the window.
Teachers are also expected to scan and upload supporting evidence. Lesson observation forms and class attendance registers, long sources of dispute between teachers and appraisers, should be assembled and verified before the upload begins, so that the portal is not tied up with repeated attempts.
The role of school administrators
The reopening is equally important for headteachers, principals and other appraisers. They can now appraise their teachers on the portal. School heads, in turn, are to be appraised, after which countersigning can be completed.
Appraisers sit in the middle of the process. Their action determines whether a teacher’s submission is finalized, and a delay at this stage holds up everything that follows.
The Commission has maintained a firm stance toward administrators who neglect their supervisory duties, and has repeatedly warned against failing to appraise teachers or refusing to countersign appraisals without valid cause.
The expectation, therefore, is that administrators will move quickly but responsibly. Appraisal is meant to be a conversation about growth, and ratings should be fair and backed by evidence, with constructive comments that help teachers improve rather than simply tick a box. Countersigning should follow promptly, unless there is a valid reason to withhold it.
Why the glitches mattered
The technical problems did more than inconvenience individual users. They had a knock-on effect across the whole appraisal chain.
As earlier reported, the TPAD process involves two separate stages. Teachers first fill in their appraisals online.
Summaries are then compiled and averaged from the submitted TPADs using an Excel sheet provided by the Commission, and forwarded to the Sub-County Director through the zonal Curriculum Support Officer (CSO). A summary can only be as complete as the TPADs behind it.
When the portal stalled, teachers could not finish their entries. Appraisers could not appraise or countersign what had not been submitted.
And the ICT teachers who, in many schools, are handed the task of compiling summaries were left waiting, unable to complete work that depended on everyone else.
The problem was compounded by a familiar habit. Although the TPAD calendar envisages data and evidence being uploaded throughout the term, many teachers delay their entries until the closing weeks.
That concentrates traffic on the system at the same moment, and when a platform is already struggling, the result is a bottleneck. The glitches did not create the last-minute rush, but they made it considerably harder to manage.
From the portal to the summaries
Once teachers have completed their appraisals and administrators have appraised and countersigned, schools can turn to the TPAD summaries. This sequence matters, and schools should follow it carefully.
In our earlier coverage of the end-of-term crunch, we noted that headteachers and principals are responsible for submitting summaries to Sub-County Directors through zonal CSOs, and that the work is frequently delegated to ICT teachers.
That arrangement has not changed. What the reopening does is restore the foundation on which the summaries depend.
Schools are therefore advised to treat the reopened window as a structured exercise rather than a scramble.
A practical approach would be for teachers to complete and submit their appraisals first, for appraisers to then work through submissions and countersign, and for the ICT teacher or designated officer to begin compiling the summary only when the figures are final.
Compiling too early risks errors, since figures can shift as late entries come in and countersigning is completed.
Accuracy is particularly important because the summary is averaged from individual TPADs. A single missing or incorrect entry can distort the school’s consolidated figures, forcing the person compiling them to re-check and redo the work.
A window that should not be wasted
The reopening is described as brief, and that should shape how schools respond. Having already lost time to the technical hitches, teachers and administrators now face a compressed schedule in which delay carries real consequences.
Several practical steps can help. Teachers should log in early rather than waiting for the final hours, when server traffic is likely to be heaviest.
Evidence should be scanned and organized in advance. Heads should communicate clearly with staff about internal deadlines so that appraisers have time to review submissions before the portal closes again.
And where a teacher encounters a fault, it should be documented and reported through the appropriate channels rather than left unrecorded.
Heads must also remember that they carry their own obligations, including termly Performance Contracts submitted to Sub-County Directors.
Balancing these responsibilities with the demands of appraising and countersigning a full staff is no small task, which is another reason to begin immediately.
Technology, training and trust
The glitches come at an awkward time for the Commission. As reported previously, TSC has invited bidders through a notice on MyGov to provide teacher training on artificial intelligence applications and to review, develop and deploy its TPAD online systems.
The Commission is seeking a consultant to equip teachers with skills in digital capacity building, pedagogical innovation, AI applications, data ethics and practical AI tools for Competency-Based Education.
That ambition raises the stakes for the platform’s reliability. The revised appraisal framework includes a standard on the integration of technology in teaching and learning, which assesses teachers on their ability to use digital content, engage learners through virtual platforms and apply adaptive teaching methods.
It is difficult to ask teachers to demonstrate digital competence on a system that fails them at the decisive moment.
The recent disruption has therefore sharpened questions that were already being asked. Observers say any future upgrade must be able to handle peak demand, since the surge of entries at the end of term is predictable and recurring.
Teachers in rural and marginalized areas, who often contend with unreliable internet, limited devices and electricity gaps, are likely to feel the effects of any system weakness most acutely.
There is also a matter of trust. Teachers who have long complained of unfairly low marks and subjective remarks want assurance that technology will make appraisal fairer, not more opaque.
Part of earning that trust is demonstrating that the basic system works when it matters, and that technical failures will not be allowed to penalize those affected by them.
Lessons for the next term
The episode offers a clear lesson that predates any glitch: the appraisal calendar exists for a reason.
Planning meetings are meant to be held by the last week of the holiday, professional documents submitted by the end of the first week of term, lesson observations and gap identification carried out between the second and tenth weeks, and rating meetings completed by the end of the term.
Where schools keep to that rhythm, data and evidence are uploaded steadily, and the portal does not face a sudden surge.
CSOs have repeatedly said that following the calendar is the surest way to ensure tasks are completed smoothly and on time.
If the end-of-term rush is spread across the term, a technical fault becomes an inconvenience rather than a crisis.
For now, the immediate priority is plain. Teachers with pending appraisals should log in and complete the teaching standards, learner progress and attendance sections.
Appraisers should appraise their teachers, school heads should be appraised, and countersigning should follow.
Only then should schools turn to compiling their TPAD summaries for submission to the Sub-County Director through the zonal CSO.
The window is open, but it will not stay open for long. Schools that use it carefully will close out the term with their appraisals in order. Those that wait may find themselves racing the clock all over again.
