In the next Form 1 and Grade 6 pupils start high school in Kenya for the first time in January 2023, it is clear that TSC will need to hire additional teachers to accommodate the large number of students.
Under the plans to address the teacher shortage that will affect schools in January 2023, Teacher Service Commission (TSC) will hire more than 20,000 tutors starting in September 2022.
Education ministry reports that over 1.2 million students will enter grade 7 in junior secondary schools under the CBC program, and almost the same number of students will take the KCPE and enter form one.
Gong by the fact that there will be a serious crisis in secondary schools due to the number of lessons tripling per teacher with this many students in Form 1 and Grade 7 under the junior secondary school, the teachers’ employment has moved quickly to ensure that at least 20,000 more interns will be hired to close the already too wide gap between students and teachers.
Now that there are currently only two classes in each secondary school to accommodate junior secondary school students in Grade 7, the ministry of education is still suffering from a severe lack of classrooms.
In that some schools admit students in more than ten streams, each with at least 60 students, two streams are insufficient to accommodate such high numbers.
The Education stakeholders must rethink the decision to house all junior secondary schools in secondary schools as the issues of staffing and overstretching of facilities will undoubtedly hit the schools seriously and compromise the quality of learning as the lack of other facilities like dorms and laboratories will worsen as the number of students doubles.
