Hopeless Papers: Why P1 Teachers Feel Betrayed as TSC Rejects Their Degrees and Diplomas

For years, the message to Kenya’s primary school teachers was simple: study hard, upgrade your papers, and the system will reward you.

Thousands believed it. They sat in lecture halls on weekends, during school holidays and in the evenings after a full day of teaching.

They paid fees from modest salaries, and many took loans to do it. Today, a significant number of them hold diplomas and degrees that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) will not recognize for promotion. Now a new Career Progression Guidelines (CPG) is on the way, and it offers them little hope of change.

A System That Once Kept Its Promise

Before the Career Progression Guidelines took effect in 2018, teacher promotions were pegged on the Schemes of Service (SoS).

The path was well understood. A P1 teacher who earned a diploma or degree would present the certificate to TSC, which would issue an acknowledgement letter. A promotion to the next job group would follow.

Promotion after acquiring a higher academic qualification was, in effect, guaranteed. Even when TSC delayed the salary changes, it later paid arrears from the date the certificate was acknowledged.

Teachers could plan around that. A loan taken to finance a degree could be serviced in the expectation that a higher salary was coming.

That certainty shaped behaviour across the profession. Primary school teachers went back to school in large numbers because the rules told them it was the right thing to do.

The 2014 Circular That Changed Everything

The ground shifted in January 2014. The government, then led by President Uhuru Kenyatta, and the TSC, then headed by Nancy Macharia, issued a circular halting promotions based on academic papers.

For many teachers, this was the moment their certificates were rendered useless. Those who had completed their studies found the door closed.

Those still in the middle of their courses had already committed time and money to a path the employer had just stopped honouring. Many kept studying anyway, hoping the policy would be reversed.

From Job Evaluation to the 2018 CPG

In 2016, a job evaluation was carried out on a new promotion mechanism, and in 2018 the current CPG was introduced. Academic papers took a back seat. Promotion was no longer pegged on certificates but largely on age and years of service.

Teachers who had earned their qualifications the hard way found themselves stagnating. A teacher with a degree and one without, of similar age and length of service, now stood in the same queue with the same prospects.

Who Is Recognized and Who Is Not

The CPG did not ignore qualifications entirely. TSC moved to recognize and promote P1 teachers with a degree in secondary option who scored C+ (plus) in KCSE and C+ (plus) in two teaching subjects. It also recognized teachers with a Diploma in Special Needs Education (SNE).

Recognition came with deployment conditions. Teachers with a secondary option degree were first deployed to secondary schools, and later to junior schools, to address staffing gaps.

Those with an SNE diploma were deployed to special schools and units. The Commission, in other words, recognized qualifications where it needed to fill specific gaps.

Left out are several large groups:

• P1 teachers with a degree in primary option
• P1 teachers with a diploma and degree in Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE)
• P1 teachers with a degree in secondary option but a plain C in KCSE

For these teachers, the degree they sacrificed to earn carries no weight. A teacher with a primary option degree has trained specifically for the level at which they teach, yet that qualification counts for nothing, while a degree in a different option is recognized because of a higher KCSE grade.

The Scoresheet That Says It All

The clearest illustration of how the Commission values academic papers came in its recent advertisement for the promotion of 34,016 teachers. The scoresheet allocated marks as follows:

• PhD: 3 marks
• Masters: 2 marks
• Degree: 1 mark
• Diploma: zero marks

A diploma earns nothing. A degree earns a single mark. Even a PhD is worth only three. Meanwhile, TSC awarded a maximum of 30 marks for age and another 30 for the period served in the current grade.

A teacher’s birth certificate and length of service, which require no effort or investment, outweigh the highest academic achievement tenfold.

For teachers, the scoresheet is a strong message that academic certificates do not matter. It is hard to argue they are wrong.

A New CPG on the Horizon, and Little Comfort in It

Teachers who hoped the next policy revision might restore the value of their papers are now facing disappointment.

TSC has designed a new CPG to replace the one that has governed promotions since 2018. The new guidelines are undergoing job evaluation.

On World Teachers Day, President William Ruto said he had been briefed by Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) chairperson Sammy Chepkwony and that the new CPG would be out in two weeks.

That timeline has raised expectations among teachers across the country, who have waited a long time for a fresh framework.

The content of the new CPG is what worries many P1 teachers. It does not recognize academic papers. Instead, it rewards teachers on the basis of talents.

TSC has not been shy about the direction of its thinking: where the Schemes of Service rewarded certificates and the 2018 CPG rewarded age and time served, the new framework looks set to reward demonstrated talent.

Supporters of the approach argue that a certificate is not proof of classroom excellence and that a talented teacher deserves to advance whether or not they hold a degree.

There is something to that argument. But for the teacher who spent years and millions of shillings upgrading their papers, it means a third policy shift in which their effort is set aside.

First the certificates were frozen in 2014. Then they were sidelined in 2018. Now they are to be left out of the next framework altogether.

Questions also remain about how “talent” will be defined and measured. Without clear, objective and transparent criteria, teachers fear the new system could become subjective and open to favouritism, replacing a rigid but predictable formula with one that is harder to challenge.

The Human and Financial Cost

Behind the policy language are real households. Thousands of primary school teachers in the lower cadre are going through rough economic times despite spending huge sums to upgrade their studies.

Many paid tuition from already stretched salaries. Others borrowed from banks, savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) and other lenders, and they are still repaying.

Many remain stuck in grade C1. They carry the debt of their education but not the salary that was supposed to justify it.

Some describe a quiet demoralization: why keep investing in professional growth when the employer has signalled, repeatedly, that it will not count?

The frustration is compounded by the sense that the rules changed after the investment was made. Teachers who enrolled under the Schemes of Service did so in good faith, relying on a framework the employer itself had maintained for years.

A Different Outcome for Police Constables

What makes the situation harder to accept is that others in the public service have fared differently. In October 2022, the Employment and Labour Relations Court ordered the National Police Service (NPS) to recognize and pay police constables who had upgraded their studies in various accredited universities.

The case arose after a group of constables who had earned degrees protested and took their employer to court for failing to promote them.

Over 1,700 graduate police constables were promoted from Job Group F to Job Group J. The Court also ordered the NPS to pay arrears. The affected officers received around Ksh 400,000 each, totalling over Sh700 million.

The contrast is stark. A court looked at public servants who had upgraded their qualifications and concluded that the employer had a duty to recognize that effort and compensate them for the delay. Primary school teachers, many of whom followed an identical path, have received no comparable relief.

The two situations are not identical. Different employers operate under different schemes of service, and the police ruling turned on its own facts.

But the principle that investment in education should translate into recognition is one teachers believe applies equally to them.

Is Legal Action the Way Forward?

The police ruling has raised the question of whether teachers should pursue a similar route. Some believe a collective case, perhaps through their unions, could challenge the refusal to recognize certificates earned under the earlier framework.

Teachers who began or completed studies before the 2014 circular may argue they had a legitimate expectation of promotion based on the rules then in force.

Others are cautious. Litigation is slow and expensive, and the outcome is never guaranteed. The Commission may argue that it has the authority to design promotion policy and that its guidelines apply equally to all teachers.

Whether a court would see teachers’ circumstances as comparable to the constables’ is something only a court can decide.

The release of the new CPG may sharpen the debate. Once the document is public, unions and affected teachers will be able to scrutinize exactly how academic qualifications are treated and decide whether to negotiate, protest or go to court.

What Fairness Would Look Like

There are practical ways the Commission could ease the tension without abandoning its new approach. It could assign meaningful weight to degrees and diplomas relevant to a teacher’s area of work, so that academic effort counts alongside talent.

It could create a transitional arrangement for teachers who enrolled under the old Schemes of Service, recognizing that they made their decisions under different rules. It could also explain why some degrees are recognized and others, such as primary option and ECDE qualifications, are not.

Such measures would restore some trust. A profession whose very purpose is education should not penalize its own members for pursuing it.

Conclusion

The story of the P1 teacher with an unrecognized degree is a story of a promise quietly withdrawn. Under the Schemes of Service, higher qualifications led to promotion, with arrears for any delay.

After the 2014 circular and the 2018 CPG, that link was severed. Today a degree earns a single mark, a diploma earns none, and age and years of service dominate.

With a new CPG expected within weeks and designed to reward talent rather than academic papers, there is little sign the certificates will ever pay.

Meanwhile, police constables who upgraded their studies won promotion and hundreds of thousands of shillings through the courts, while primary school teachers are left with certificates, loans and a grade C1 that will not move.

Whether through policy review, negotiation or litigation, the question of how the Commission treats academic effort will have to be confronted.

Until then, thousands of teachers will wonder whether their sacrifices in lecture halls were an investment or simply a loss.