The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has sent out promotion letters to 23,388 teachers in different counties so they can start working in their new positions at schools. The letters will begin arriving next week.
TSC County and Sub County Directors will assign these teachers to schools that have open positions. This follows approval from the National Assembly Committee on Education, led by MP Julius Melly, to promote this number of teachers.
However, this is less than the 25,252 teachers that TSC wanted to promote after interviews held in January and February. The National Assembly provided Sh1 billion for promotions, which only covered 5,690 of the 25,252 positions.
There were concerns raised by MPs about 5,291 teachers who were promoted without meeting the required three years of service, as stated in the Career Progression Guidelines (CPG). They accused TSC of being unfair and biased in the promotion process, saying some teachers were promoted too soon and that some regions received more promotion opportunities than others.
In a report to the Education Committee, TSC said they removed 1,864 teachers from the promotion list because they did not meet the three-year requirement. TSC CEO Nancy Macharia explained that these teachers were dropped to follow the Committee’s recommendations.
TSC is also working on new promotion guidelines to make the process clearer and fairer. Macharia assured the National Assembly that the new rules would help ensure a transparent promotion process.
She mentioned that the three-year requirement was sometimes waived to help address staffing issues in certain areas. For example, some counties did not have enough qualified teachers, so the experience requirement was reduced in those cases.
In response to the criticism, TSC was given a week to provide a detailed report. They also plan to automate the promotion process to make it easier and reduce mistakes. This will include online applications and a standardized scoring system for interviews.
Additionally, TSC is committed to helping teachers in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) get recognized for their work and align their grades with their responsibilities through special measures.
