Whether the current serving intern teachers will be converted to permanent and pensionable (pnp) terms, is a matter of time this week.
TSC is set to advertise recruitment of another 20,000 intern teachers across the country. TSC chairperson Jamleck Muturi hinted that the advert will run this week.
The intern teachers will help to mitigate the huge teacher shortage in junior secondary school (JSS) and more so because the Grade 7 learners are set to spill over to Grade 8 in January next year.
Muturi made the announcement June 28, during the Kenya Secondary School Head Teachers Association (Kessha) conference at the Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Hall in Mombasa.
He said Sh4.6 billion has been set aside for recruitment of 20,000 intern teachers, who will then get trained on competency-based curriculum (CBC).
Muturi said TSC was allocated Sh1.3 billion for capacity building of teachers on the competency-based curriculum.
“TSC got a good amount of money … amounting to Sh323.7 billion… Sh4.6 billion has been set aside for the recruitment of 20,000 teachers on contract. By next week (this week), we will put up an advert so that qualified people can apply for these jobs,” said Dr Muturi.
The current serving intern teachers are unsure whether the Commission will confirm them on pnp terms.
This is especially after TSC CEO Nancy Macharia said that the 20,000 interns recruited in February will have to wait until January 2025 before they are given permanent and pensionable jobs.
The TSC boss said this when she appeared before the National Assembly’s Education Committee in May.
However the Commission chairperson hinted that they received enough allocation in the budget. This could mean that TSC has enough funds to convert the serving intern teachers to pnp terms.
Interns in primary schools receive a ‘stipend’ of Sh15,000, while those in secondary schools receive Sh20,000.
The July recruitment of 20,000 interns will raise the number of tutors hired by the Kenya Kwanza administration to 56,000 in less than one year.