The government through the Ministry of Education now has two years until August 2025 to establish Kenya Teacher Training College (KeTTC) to administer all Pre-service Teacher Training colleges (TTCs) as campuses.
This is contained in the recommendations of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) report which was submitted to and endorsed by President William Ruto, whereby the Ministry is supposed to develop a framework for the establishment of KeTTC and map and equip all TTCs and their resources to align them with the training programmes they will offer.
PWPER observed in their report that teacher education and management roles are carried out mainly by the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), with no clear framework.
In addition, conflicts that arise between the two institutions (Ministry and TSC) normally affect the quality of service delivery with the task force observing further that there is a lack of a coherent approach to teacher education and deployment, with many well-intended sector players for the same sector taking different and sometimes conflicting approaches.
If the recommendations of the task force on education reforms are adopted, it is likely that the 32 Public TTCs will now be campuses centrally managed by KeTTC just like it is the case for Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC).
The task force also reviewed the minimum entry grades for Pre-service teacher education programmes to C (plain) in KCSE or its equivalent in Senior School for both Diplomas in Early Childhood, Primary, and Special Needs Teachers Education with no cluster subjects; while Diploma in Technical Teacher Education to C(Plain) in KCSE or its equivalent in SS with C+ in related STEM teaching subjects.
Within the two years period, both the Ministry of Education and TSC will have to establish Kenya School of Teacher and Education Management (KeSTEM) to coordinate all in-service programmes for Continuous Professional Development for teachers, institutional leaders and education officers.
They will be required within that period to have established a framework for creating the KeSTEM and its regional centres and develop a framework for coordinating in-service training for teachers, teacher educators, education administrators and education officers.
This implies that moving forward, all capacity building and training of teachers, institutional leaders including headteachers and Principals, and education officers will centrally be done by a central body, KeSTEM; unlike today where the in-serve and capacity building is contacted by different education entities.
The findings of the report showed that institutional administrators do not have clear in-service education programmes. Further, the implementation of CBC faced challenges mainly emanating from inadequate teacher capacity and preparedness.
The PWPER also observed that Kenya was not attracting the best of its student population to the teaching profession. The uneven distribution of teachers across the Country remains an issue of concern, with some regions experiencing acute shortages while other regions were overstaffed.
The Ministry will also be required to develop guidelines on how all teachers who graduated before 2023 undergo a mandatory one-year retooling and upgrading programme for compliance with the curriculum change.
A total of 229,292 teachers have been trained in both Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) and Assessment (CBA) between 2019 to 2021 including 1,411Curriculum Support Officers both Regular and SNE, a total of 2,874 CBC Champions teachers (Regular and SNE), 23,324 Head Teachers (Regular and SNE) and 5,833 Head Teachers from Private schools; 164,340 teachers (Public schools) for Grades 1,2,3,4 and 5; and 31,510 teachers (Private schools) for Grades 1,2,3,4 and 5.
By Our reporter
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