The Teacher Service Commission (TSC) is confusing elementary teachers who are aspiring to promotions by covertly sending practicing PTE teachers to secondary schools.
Nairobi County received five letters of deployment this week, Nakuru County received two, and Kiambu, Kilifi, Makueni, Kajiado, and Embu each received three, increasing concerns about the exercise’s glacial pace. A few of the letters of deployment as well as the letters of appointment for new instructors arrived at the counties.
In order to assign PTE teachers to secondary schools, the TSC, according to sources, has created a merit list from the prior applicants. TSC promotes elementary school teachers who have advanced their education through deployment.
One thousand deployment positions were posted by TSC in 2019 and another one thousand in September 2022. Last year, TSC offered 1,000 extra spots for deployment. Hoverer, TSC has not advertised any positions for deployment this year, but it has continued to send out letters of deployment, albeit infrequently to some counties.
TSC continues to send 1000 PTE teachers to teach in secondary schools each year, despite the fact that it stopped automatically promoting teachers who upgraded their certifications in January 2014. In the previous three years, 3,000 P1 graduate teachers received promotions to teach in secondary schools.
TSC had discussions with representatives of the Kenya National Union of Teachers, KNUT, on July 13, 2022. He was urging TSC to permit primary school instructors who had higher academic credentials through in-service training to instruct in junior secondary schools under the direction of its secretary general, Collins Oyuu.
KNUT requested in particular that TS promote primary school teachers with degrees in secondary options but C-parallel results on the KCSE to teach in such institutions. Additionally, they requested that during deployment drills, TSC acknowledge teachers who have secondary option diplomas.
TSC mandates the following qualifications for teachers before they can be deployed to teach in junior secondary schools:
*According to TSC, for teachers to be deployed to teach in junior secondary school, one must;*
Be a Kenyan citizen
Be a holder of a P1 certificate
Be a holder of a bachelor’s degree in education with two teaching subjects
Must have attained at least a c plus mean grade at KCSE or its equivalent C plus in the two teaching subjects
Must be serving under TSC
