TSC: 149,350 teachers required to handle Grade 7, 8 and 9

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) requires a total of 72,422 teachers to address a teacher shortage in junior secondary schools (JSS).

This was revealed by TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia who said the Commission requires a total of 149,350 teachers to handle Grade 7, 8 and 9.

Macharia said currently TSC has employed 76,928 teachers in junior secondary representing 51.5% of the requirement.

These are 39,550 junior secondary school teachers who were recruited on internship terms.

8,378 P1 teachers who were deployed to junior secondary and 9,000 junior secondary school teachers recruited on permanent and pensionable terms.

Macharia said the government has already provided funds to convert the 39,550 JSS intern teachers to pnp terms in January.

She said the government has also allocated sh 4.8 billion which TSC has used to recruit 20,000 JSS teachers on internship terms.

She said during the recruitment the Commission prioritized recruitment of science teachers to address severe shortage.

Macharia said TSC has so far retooled a total of 229,292 teachers on Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) and Competency Based Assessment (CBA) since April 2019.

She said a total of 60,642 JSS teachers have been retooled from May 2023 to November 2024.

The Commission is under pressure to address a looming teacher crisis in JSS in January as currently the teacher to class ratio is 1:1;

TSC plans to deploy more PTE teachers to JSS next year to help address this shortage.

The Commission has been deploying P1 teachers since 2019 as a form of promotion after numerous complaints of stagnation from primary school teachers who upgraded their academic certificates.

In 2019, 2020 and 2021 a total of 1,000 P1 teachers were deployed each year to secondary schools while in 2022 to 2024 around 8,378 teachers were deployed to serve the first cohorts of the CBC in JSS.

Sources have revealed that TSC will not allow anything less than a minimum of C+ as KCSE mean grade and minimum of C+ in two teaching subjects for deployment of primary school teachers to JSS.

The Commission is also planning to deploy excess secondary school teachers to JSS next year.

High school teachers registered for deployment after the Commission released a memo guiding the process.

In a memo addressed to Regional, County, Sub County Directors and Principals of secondary schools, TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia had ordered for immediate registration of secondary school teachers employed after the year 2015 to facilitate their deployment to JSS.

All Principals of secondary schools were required to submit names of teachers in their stations employed from 2016 to TSC Sub County Directors offices by Friday 18th October 2024.

Thousands of secondary school teachers will be idling as all secondary schools will not have Form one class from January 2025 as CBC takes over.

The Commission has directed the teachers to be deployed to junior secondary schools near their current working stations.

The deployment will be based on subject combinations popularly known as subject clusters.