The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) will deploy thousands of secondary school teachers to support learning in junior secondary schools (JSS) starting next year.
This was revealed by Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) national chairperson Omboko Milemba, at Kuppet Annual Delegates Conference (ADC) in Vihiga.
Milemba revealed that the union sought to block any attempt by TSC to deploy secondary school teachers to junior secondary but to no avail.
The Commission has previously refuted such claims after a viral circular outlined TSC plan and requirements for teachers to be deployed to JSS. TSC flagged the circular as fake.
However sources say TSC is in the final process of deploying over twenty thousand secondary school teachers to JSS in 2025.
High school teachers registered for deployment after the Commission released a memo guiding the process.
In a memo addressed to Regional, County, Sub County Directors and Principals of secondary schools, TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia had ordered for immediate registration of secondary school teachers employed after the year 2015 to facilitate their deployment to JSS.
All Principals of secondary schools were required to submit names of teachers in their stations employed from 2016 to TSC Sub County Directors offices by Friday 18th October 2024.
TSC has also completed recruitment of 20,000 junior secondary school teachers on internship terms.
The recruited teachers have been posted to their working station to start working in January for a one year contract.
TSC has turned to excess teachers in secondary schools to address teacher shortage in Grade 9 class next year.
Thousands of secondary school teachers will be idling as all secondary schools will not have Form one class from January 2025 as Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) takes over.
The Commission has directed the teachers to be deployed to junior secondary schools near their current working stations.
The deployment will be based on subject combinations popularly known as subject clusters.
TSC also plans to deploy a small number of primary school teachers to handle grades 7, 8 and 9 classes next year.
The Commission is under pressure to address a looming teacher crisis in junior secondary as currently the teacher to class ration is 1:1;
The Commission has been deploying P1 teachers since 2019 as a form of promotion after numerous complaints of stagnation from primary school teachers who upgraded their academic certificates.
In 2019, 2020 and 2021 a total of 1,000 P1 teachers were deployed each year to secondary schools while in 2022 to 2024 around 8,378 teachers were deployed to serve the first cohorts of the CBC in JSS.
While appearing before Parliamentary Committee on Education, the Commission CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia said they have recruited 48,550 teachers over the past two financial years to JSS.
Of these, 39,550 are interns who are now confirmed on pnp terms, while 9,000 were employed on permanent terms.
Also a total of 8,378 primary school teachers were deployed to JSS in the last two years, raising the total number of JSS teachers to 56,928.
Macharia recently stated that the Commission a total of 149,350 teachers to serve in Grade 7, 8 and 9.
She said currently TSC has a total of 76,928 teachers in JSS which is 51.5% of the required number.
The projected teacher shortage in junior secondary schools now stands at 72,422 teachers.