For a growing number of Kenyans, the certificate that once promised a stable career has become a document kept in a folder, brought out at every advert and returned to the drawer after every disappointment.
They are P1 graduates, trained at public expense or at great family cost, who have waited a decade or more for a Teachers Service Commission (TSC) job that never comes.
Some qualified in 2013 or 2014 and have since built whole adult lives around waiting. Others are now past forty, and a few are approaching retirement age without ever having drawn a single TSC salary.
Their story is one of the quieter consequences of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), which has rearranged Kenya’s school structure and, with it, the arithmetic of who gets hired.
How the Curriculum Change Created a Surplus
Under the old 8-4-4 system, primary school ran through Standard 8. Teachers were needed across eight grades, and recruitment followed enrolment.
CBC moved Grades 7 and 8 into junior secondary, which shifted learners out of primary schools and into institutions that now need different teachers with different specialisations.
The effect on primary staffing was immediate. Primary schools lost a large share of their upper classes but kept many of the teachers who had served them.
Junior and senior secondary schools, meanwhile, faced a shortage estimated at around 100,000 positions nationwide, with junior schools accounting for roughly 78,000 of those gaps.
So Kenya has a double problem: acute shortages in one part of the system and a perceived surplus in another.
The TSC had in 2025 put the primary surplus at about 18,000 teachers, concentrated in the lower primary sections.
Unemployed P1 graduates sit on the wrong side of that equation, trained for a level that the commission says no longer needs them.
What TSC Told Parliament
The position was stated plainly in April 2025, when senior TSC officials appeared before the National Assembly’s Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee.
Legislators wanted to know why thousands of primary teacher education (PTE) graduates remained jobless while several counties reported teacher shortages.
The commission’s answer was that primary schools already had more teachers than they needed.
The TSC told the committee it had advised training colleges to stop admitting new students because the payroll and the job market were both saturated with primary teachers.
Its then CEO explained the reasoning: “After curriculum changes removed Standards 6, 7, and 8, we ended up with surplus teachers in some primary schools. We’ve advised against training more primary teachers, yet colleges continue.”
For the jobless graduates watching from outside, the statement carried a double meaning. It confirmed what many had suspected, that the stalled hiring was structural and not temporary.
It also made clear that the commission saw the colleges, which kept training teachers it would not hire, as part of the problem.
Colleges Close the Door
The warning did not stay on paper. This year the Ministry of Education acted by halting the recruitment of trainee primary teachers in teacher training colleges, which means the colleges have admitted no new students for the September 2026 intake.
The suspension is reported to last three years as the government works to address the unemployment among primary teachers.
The logic is difficult to fault. Training thousands more teachers for jobs that do not exist deepens the crisis and burdens families with fees for qualifications that lead nowhere. Stopping the intake prevents the backlog from growing.
But the decision also changes the job market in a way that matters for those already waiting. With no new graduates entering the pool for several years, the existing unemployed P1 teachers become, in effect, the only candidates for the primary replacement posts that do arise. That is a small consolation, and it comes after years of waiting.
The Human Cost of the Wait
Statistics describe the surplus. They do not describe what a decade of unemployment does to a person trained to teach.
Many of these graduates took up whatever work was available while they waited. Some teach in private schools for a fraction of a TSC salary, often without job security.
Others do casual labour, run small businesses, ride motorcycles or work as farmhands. Each year that passes brings a new round of applications, a new set of hopes and, for most, another rejection or simply silence.
Age compounds the problem. A graduate who finished college at twenty-two in 2014 is now in their mid-thirties at the youngest.
Those who qualified earlier are well into their forties. Some are close to retirement age and face the bitter prospect of reaching it without ever having been employed in the profession they trained for. For them, even a late appointment would offer little time to build a pension.
There is also the matter of dignity. Many of these teachers are respected figures in their communities, people who are expected to be in classrooms.
The distance between that expectation and the reality of their daily lives is a heavy thing to carry.
November: A Narrow Opening
Against this background, attention has turned to the recruitment expected in November. The TSC chairperson has publicly said that the recruitment of new teachers, and the replacement of those who have left the service through natural attrition, will happen in November.
Natural attrition covers retirement, resignation, death and dismissal, and retirements peak in September and October.
The timing is tied to the school calendar. The commission wants national examinations and assessments concluded so that schools can finish the academic year before staff are moved and new teachers onboarded.
Information from sources familiar with the planning points to November 23, 2026, as the date when major recruitment activity could begin after the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations end.
Advertisements are expected earlier, giving candidates time to study the vacancies and apply through the commission’s recruitment system. The precise timetable, however, depends on official communication from the TSC.
Successful candidates will be engaged on permanent and pensionable terms, which is exactly what long-waiting graduates want.
A Caution About the Numbers
Hopeful applicants should be careful about the figures circulating online. A widely shared advert claimed 12,632 vacancies, split into 8,400 primary posts, 32 junior school posts and 4,200 senior school posts. The TSC has stated that this advert is fraudulent and has reiterated that legitimate vacancies are announced only through its official communication channels and web portals.
Some reports describe 12,632 vacancies, split into 8,400 primary posts, 32 junior school posts and 4,200 senior school as expected numbers from sources familiar with the plans.
Whether or not any version of them proves accurate, there is no official confirmation, and applicants should treat them as unverified until the commission publishes its own advert.
What the commission has said officially is more modest. Primary school hiring has ended as mass recruitment and is now limited to replacing teachers who leave through natural attrition.
Posts will match the vacancies created by those exits and will be advertised by sub-county and county.
November’s primary recruitment should therefore be read as a replacement exercise, not an expansion, and the numbers will be modest compared with the large drives of the past.
How the Process Will Work
Under the circular guidelines issued by TSC CEO Eveleen Mitei, primary school recruitment on permanent and pensionable terms for the 2025/2026 financial year is decentralised.
It is run at sub-county and county level, though TSC headquarters keeps the authority to step in where necessary.
Vacancies are advertised publicly, and applicants apply online through the official TSC portal for specific county or sub-county listings. Registration under Section 23(1) of the TSC Act is mandatory, and unregistered applicants are disqualified immediately.
A three-person sub-county panel, made up of the Sub-County Director, the Sub-County HR Officer and a Curriculum Support Officer, handles selection.
Shortlisted candidates are notified by SMS at least seven days before document verification, which takes place in person with original documents. Forged documents lead to disqualification and professional deregistration.
A Scoring System That Rewards the Wait
The scoring system may be the most significant feature for long-term jobseekers, because it is built around time. The panel score sheet carries a maximum of 100 points, divided as follows:
In effect, about 70 percent of the score rewards the time spent waiting and about 20 percent rewards age. Academic strength, including the DPTE upgrade, accounts for roughly 10 percent.
The design is deliberate. It favours the older, longer-waiting teachers who have been shut out the longest, which fits the commission’s stated aim of addressing the backlog of unemployed graduates.
For a teacher who qualified in 2012 and is now in their late forties, the system offers real recognition of the years lost.
For a recent graduate, it offers far less, though the college intake freeze means fewer such graduates are coming.
Ties are broken by length of stay since graduation, then by the strength of academic and professional certificates, then by aggregate KCSE grades.
Preference goes to applicants never previously employed by the TSC on permanent terms, and to local applicants, starting at the sub-county level. At least 5 percent of advertised posts are reserved for applicants with disabilities.
Accuracy matters more than ever. Because so many points hang on dates, a mistaken graduation year on an application can cost dozens of points.
If Things Go Wrong
Applicants unhappy with an outcome can file a written complaint with the County Director within seven days, with an email copy to dirstaffing@tsc.go.ke.
The County Director has seven days to resolve it, and unresolved matters go to the TSC Appeals Committee, which has 14 days to reach a final decision. Keeping copies of the application, the SMS notification and all documents is essential.
Preparing Now
For those still hoping, preparation is the one thing within their control. Confirm that your TSC registration is valid.
Assemble original documents, including your national ID, TSC certificate, academic and professional certificates, school-leaving certificate and, where applicable, an NCPWD card, and make sure names and dates match across all of them.
Keep your registered phone line active, since SMS is the official channel. Plan how you will reach the verification venue, and apply only for specific county or sub-county listings you have read carefully. Above all, rely on official TSC channels and nothing else.
A Policy Problem, Not a Personal Failure
The deeper question raised by this story is not how to win a handful of posts but how a country trained a generation of teachers for jobs it later decided it did not need.
Curriculum reform was a legitimate policy choice, but its effects on the people already in the pipeline were foreseeable. The graduates now waiting did nothing wrong. They followed the path the state itself offered.
Stopping college intake prevents the problem from growing. It does not resolve the situation of those already caught in it.
Whether through retraining pathways into junior school subjects, redeployment from the surplus in lower primary to areas of need, or a recruitment approach that gives real weight to years waited, the thousands of long-unemployed P1 teachers deserve a considered answer beyond occasional replacement posts.
For now, November offers a narrow window. For some, the scoring system may finally turn years of waiting into an advantage.
For many others, the exercise will be too small to change their circumstances. Either way, these teachers have earned something better than uncertainty, and the conversation about what the country owes them is overdue.
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