The on-going retooling of Teachers Service Commission (TSC) field officers who will later train Junior Secondary School (JSS) teachers has been marred by controversy over reduced allowances during the workshops being undertaken across the country.
The staff who will serve as Teacher of Trainers (ToTs) are expected to train JSS teachers handling Grade 7 and 8 under both the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) and Curriculum Based Assessment (CBA) areas for both regular and Special Needs Education (SNE) for Junior School and Pre-Vocational institutions.
The filed officers are Sub County Directors of Education (SCDEs), Curriculum Support Officers (CSOs), as well as the Quality Assurance and Standards Officers (QASOs) who spoke to Education News complained that TSC had slashed their allocation to meet expenses during the training.
The teachers revealed that lunch money of KSh700 per person had been reduced from the initial Ksh. 700 to KSh450 while money for transport to and from the venue had been cut by half from KSh1000 to KSh500. They also argue they have not been provided with water as was the case before.
The money for stationery has equally been scaled down to KSh100 from the previous KSh150 has similarly been chopped, they claim.
The teachers have revealed as a result, the institutions which host the events have been having a hard time to provide them with proper meals that’s tea, snacks and lunch considering that there has been a surge in prices of goods in recent times.
They say that the amount given for transport can hardly pay for fare for their colleagues who come from far areas adding that such amount can hardly fuel a car as well.
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But responding on the claims, the TSC Head of Operations, Gabriel Mathenge through an interview with Education News over the phone, said he didn’t have sufficient information on the reasons behind the reduction of facilitation amount for the field officers undertaking the programme.
Mathenge said that the programme is funded by the World Bank and the Ministry of Education and it was difficult to know who had reduced the resources but promised to seek further clarification on the matter.
The training programme organised by TSC kicked off yesterday, May 27, 2024 and will end June 6, 2024.
TSC in a memo dated May 14, 2024 addressing the Regional and County Directors of Education, announced that they have rescheduled the dates for retooling JSS teachers from the earlier proposed date of May 20- 30, 2024 to May 27- June 6, 2024.
The face-to-face Training of ToTs kicked off yesterday at select venues in different counties and will run up to tomorrow.
Thereafter, the ToTs will train JSS teachers for four days, from May 31 to June 1 then June 3-6.
The number of regular ToTs across the country will be 2, 296 with Kitui County having the highest number (102), Baringo (82), Kisii (81), and Homa Bay (76), while counties with the least number of ToTs will be Isiolo (21) Samburu (22), and Mombasa (23).
For SNE, there are 304 ToTs across the 47 counties in the country with Kitui leading with 17, Bungoma (13), Kisumu (12) while counties with the least number are Elgeyo Marakwet with 4, Mombasa (3) and Lamu has 2.
TSC announced that it is targeting to train 59, 333 regular JSS teachers and for the SNE JSS institutions there are 2, 235 teachers who will be trained.
By Vostine Ratemo
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